Nanowires with different nitrogen concentrations were grown by Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) using DEZn, N2O and NH3as zinc, oxygen and nitrogen doping sources respectively. Low temperature photoluminescence, Raman spectroscopy and Transmission Electron Microscopy are combined to study the incorporation of nitrogen in the wires. The observation of donor-acceptor pair band confirms that the incorporation nitrogen in ZnO nanowires is responsible for the creation of acceptor centers. The additional peaks observed in Raman are correlated to nano-sized inter-atomic distance fluctuations observed in TEM. These domains combined with a resonance effect are probably the explanation of the huge Raman cross section observed for the impurity related peaks.

Hydrogen incorporation is studied in two Microwave Plasma CVD nanocrystalline diamond films deposited with prolongated BIAS or not during the growth step. The hydrogen content and bonding forms are analysed by Secondary Ion Mass Spectrometry, Raman and Fourier Transformer Infrared Spectroscopy. Our results show a high hydrogen concentration up to 3.1021 cm-1, as expected in nanocrystalline diamond, and in good agreement with the sp2 phase rate measured by Raman spectroscopy . The FTIR spectra exhibit two sharp peaks at 2850 and 2920 cm-1 and show that a fraction of hydrogen is bonded to sp3 CH2 groups. Hydrogen desorption experiments are performed to analyse the local structure modification of the diamond films.

The correlation between structural properties of ZnO sharp conical needles grown by Metallorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) on sapphire substrate and their optical signature measured by low temperature cathodoluminescence (CL) is investigated. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) shows the excellent structural properties of these needles from their base up to the end of the tip. In order to probe the emission of the needles along their length, UV CL mapping has been performed at low temperature on a single needle previously characterized by TEM. A clear blue shift of 25meV is observed for the excitonic emission close to the needle tip. This shift is too high to be fully attributed to quantum confinement. Although, it qualitatively agrees with previous observations which assigned it to a surface contribution becoming dominant upon size shrinking, the effect is less pronounced. The results are discussed in term of surface quality and other possible contributions associated to a decrease of the n-dopant concentration and to quantum confinement effect close to the tip.

We present a detailed analysis of inter- and intraband transitions in GaN/AlN self-organized quantum dots grown on sapphire, silicon (111) and 6H-SiC substrates. Quantum dot samples have been characterized by means of transmission electron microscopy, photoluminescence and photo-induced absorption spectroscopy. Interlevel transitions in the conduction band are observed in the 0.52–0.98 eV energy range, thus covering the telecommunication band. The s-pz absorption is peaked at 0.8 eV (0.52 eV) for samples with dot height of 1.5 nm (6 nm). Calculations show that in bigger dots the transition energy is governed by the value of the internal field.