Hybrid epitaxial-colloidal semiconductor nanostructures

We present a growth technique which combines wet-chemical growth and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) to create complex semiconductor nanostructures with nanocrystals as active optical material. The obtained results show that wet-chemically prepared semiconductor nanocrystals can be incorporated in an epitaxally grown crystalline cap layer. As an exemplary system we chose CdSe nanorods and CdSe(ZnS) core-shell nanocrystals in ZnSe and discuss the two limits of thin (d approximately 2R) and thick (d>2R) ZnSe cap layers of thickness d for CdSe nanorods and nanodots of radii R between 2 and 4 nm. In contrast to the strain-induced CdSe/ZnSe Stranski-Krastanow growth of a quantum dot layer in a semiconductor heterostructure, the technique proposed here does not rely on strain and thus results in additional degrees of freedom for choosing composition, concentration, shape, and size of the nanocrystals. Transmission electron microscopy and X-ray diffractometry show that the ZnSe cap layer is of high crystalline quality and provides all parameters for a consecutive growth of Bragg structures, waveguides, or diode structures for electrical injection.