Influence of molecular beam effusion cell quality on optical and electrical properties of quantum dots and quantum wells

Abstract

Quantum dot heterostructures with excellent low-noise properties became possible with high purity materials recently. We present a study on molecular beam epitaxy grown quantum wells and quantum dots with a contaminated aluminum evaporation cell, which introduced a high amount of impurities, perceivable in anomalies in optical and electrical measurements. We describe a way of addressing this problem and find that reconditioning the aluminum cell by overheating can lead to a full recovery of the anomalies in photoluminescence and capacitance–voltage measurements, leading to excellent low noise heterostructures. Furthermore, we propose a method to sense photo-induced trap charges using capacitance–voltage spectroscopy on self-assembled quantum dots. Excitation energy-dependent ionization of defect centers leads to shifts in capacitance–voltage spectra which can be used to determine the charge density of photo-induced trap charges via 1D band structure simulations. This method can be performed on frequently used quantum dot diode structures.