Electric-field-independent band gap superpositioning at 1.3 μm in an InGaAs–InAlAs strained-layer superlattice

Abstract

We report on the electric-field dependent band-gap energy and near-gap absorption coefficient of a specially designed strained-layer superlattice (SLS) employing tensile strained quantum wells and having a band-gap wavelength near 1.3 μm. The SLS was grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on an InP substrate and consists of In0.43Ga0.57As wells (4.5-nm-thick) and In0.6Al0.4As barriers (6.75-nm-thick). For applied fields from zero up to at least 2.5×105 V/cm, the band-edge absorption exhibits a single peak, which we attribute to a field-independent superpositioning of the heavy- and light-hole ground states. This result agrees with tunneling resonance calculations, which predict these hole states to have the same zero-field energy and to undergo nearly identical Stark shifts. Absorption–coefficient changes of up to 104 cm−1 were readily achieved with applied biases under 15 V, suggesting potential applications to optical modulator devices.