Effect of strain and confinement on the effective mass of holes in InSb quantum wells

Abstract

An experimental study of the hole effective mass was conducted in a series of five remotely doped InSb quantum wells under biaxial compressive strain. From cyclotron resonance measurements at 4.2 K, an increase in hole effective mass was observed with increasing hole density in otherwise similar structures from 0.045me at 2.1×1011 cm−2 to 0.083me at 5.1×1011 cm−2. The smallest effective mass (0.017me) was observed in the quantum well with the largest compressive strain (1.05%) and narrowest well width (7 nm). Our measurements are in qualitative agreement with theoretical expectations.