Shear strains in dry etched GaAs/A1As wires studied by high resolution x-ray reciprocal space mapping

Researchers investigated shear strain in quantum wires and quantum dots using high-resolution x-ray reciprocal space mapping technology. This technique is very useful for the investigation of shear strain distribution in semiconductor nanostructures, due to the fact that shear strains affect the intensity of usually weak x-ray diffraction peaks. The researchers were able to detect pitch variations as small as 10% of the period and to demonstrate a discretization pattern.