Magnetotransport phenomena in single AlGaAs/GaAs quantum wires grown on laterally patterned substrates

Single, sub-micrometer wide quantum wires have been fabricated using molecular beam epitaxy on mesa-etched GaAs substrates, where the GaAs wire is embedded in AlGaAs. By using a Hall bar pattern, potential probes were directly attached to the wires while grown. To avoid problems associated with anisotropic etching and regrowth, the wire structures were oriented along the 100 crystallographic directions. From this fabrication technique, described in detail by Shitara et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 66, 2385 (1995), one can expect the formation of high quality “self-aligned” quantum wires with a confinement potential determined by the conduction band discontinuity of AlGaAs and GaAs. Here we study the four-point magnetoresistance of 50 μm long single quantum wires with widths between 250 and 700 nm from 1.3 to 21 K. A distinct weak localization peak and universal conductance fluctuations dominate the low magnetic field regime and are used to estimate the phase-coherence length of the electrons. Pronounced 1/B periodic quantum oscillations at magnetic fields above 1 T are consistent with the picture of wires with a square-well shaped confining potential.