Investigation of phonon quantization and electron-phonon interaction in semiconductor nanoparticles by the Raman scattering and photoluminescence


The project aimed at the development of nanophononics, a new field of nanoscale science, which deals with the properties of phonons in
nanostructures and control of phonon dispersion in nanostructures, hence, with phonon engineering.The first step to create the electronic devices with sizes, smaller than mean free length of acoustic phonons, is the determination of the physical picture of microscopic processes, which is the basis of interaction between electron and acoustic phonons in nanostructures with different dimensions. At the reporting period in the frame of our project it were carried out the theoretical and experimental studies of the characteristic features of low-frequency Raman spectra of the Ge quantum dots in dielectric matrix GeO2, and of quantum films with the thicknesses equal to the quantum dot size. It was shown that embedding of nanocrystalls to dielectric leads to arising the new surface vibrations defined by the restoring force due to the nanocrystalls rotation. These vibrations determine the low-frequency Raman spectra. It was established that the electron-acoustic phonon interaction in QD´s occurs not through the deformation potential, but due to an electron perturbation from the nanostructure interface vibrations. When analyzed the Raman spectra on the acoustic vibrations of thin films, it was shown that the existence of the resonance phonon mode in the film grown on the substrate is the result of the interaction between the continuum of the phonon states in substrate and quasi-local mode in film. The large dispersion of QD´s sizes in dielectric matrix GeO2 that grown by the vapor-phase deposition limits the possibilities of their using in promising devices of nanophononics. The methods of nanocrystalls growth that turn out to increase the QD´s homogeneity and form the nanocrystalls placed on one plane, were proposed and realized in this project. These techniques allow to form mechanical untied nanocrystalls that is the important thing for the observation of the phonon localization.