Carrier transfer between V-grooved quantum wire and vertical quantum well

Abstract

We report the temperature dependence of the photoluminescence from our V-grooved GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wires. Based on the specially resolved luminescence results, our results show that in the processes of real space carrier transfer from the vertical quantum well region to quantum wire region, a 3.5 meV thermal activation energy has been experimentally observed in our sample. The thermal activation is attributed as the scattering process of carriers from two-dimensional states in the vertical quantum well to the one-dimensional quantum wire states. Based on numerical energy band structure analysis, a thermal activation energy of 2–9 meV is obtained theoretically, in good agreement with the experimental data.