Synthesis and characterization of transition metal doped semiconducting nanowires

The abundance of semiconductors in everyday life has exploded because of their cheapness, ability to do massive calculations, harvest energy and more. For all their utility semiconductors used in calculations suffer because they need an auxiliary way to store the data they've calculated. Magnetic storage has traditionally been the answer to this problem but suffers from slower speeds. Since the 1960's a class of materials known as dilute magnetic semiconductors has tried to combine the advantages of semiconductors with the non-volatile storage properties found in magnets. Often the easiest way to make these materials is by doping semiconductors with transition metal ions.;In this study I worked with PbS and ZnSe to create transition metal doped semiconducting nanostructures. The initial studies focus on the synthesis and characterization of PbS nanowires doped with Mn. The wires revealed high quality nanowires with uniform doping concentrations, both axially and radially, with atomic concentrations of 0.18 and 0.01 atomic %. The Mn didn't create any secondary phases and was substitutionally introduced. Zn1-xMn xSe nanostructures were grown with the hopes of achieving a higher Mn doping concentration where we succeeded in achieving dopant levels of x~0.3. To increase carrier concentrations, estimated to be~1016cm -3 for pure ZnSe samples, Al was doped with ZnSe and co-doped with Mn. ZnAlSe nanowires showed carrier concentration ~1019cm -3. Optical studies revealed hole traps with a characteristic time on the order of 1ms in ZnAlSe nanowire samples.