Band-gap renormalization and strain effects in semiconductor quantum wells

Abstract

The band-gap renormalization (BGR) due to exchange-correlation effects for the electron-hole plasma (EHP) of In x Ga 1− x As-InGaAsP quantum well system with strain is investigated in terms of the sheet carrier densities and strain amounts. We calculated a 4 × 4 Luttinger-Kohn Hamiltonian for the nonparabolic valence band structure of the strained-quantum well and obtained two-component EHP self-energies within the full random-phase approximation. We noted an increasing BGR with an increase of the biaxial compressive strain. The calculated results of the band-gap wavelength for biaxial compressive strain of 0.47–1.02% show the wavelength red shift of about 4.2% at n s = 1 × 10 12 cm −2 when the BGR is included, as compared to those when the BGR is not included. The band-gap wavelength red shifts of 0.2% also have been observed for every x = 0.03 increase of the indium mole fraction.