Light-Matter Interactions in Various Semiconductor Systems

Abstract

Semiconductors provide an interesting platform for studying light-matter interactions due to their unique electrically conductive behavior which can be deliberately altered in useful ways with the controlled introduction of confinement and doping, which changes the electronic band structure. This area of research has led to many important fundamental scientific discoveries that have in turn spawned a plethora of applications in areas such as photonics, microscopy, single-photon sources, and metamaterials. Silicon is the prevalent semiconductor platform for microelectronics because of its cost and electrical properties, while III-V materials are optimal for optoelectronics because of the ability to engineer a direct bandgap and create versatile heterojunctions by growing binary, ternary, or quaternary compounds.