Temperature dependence of quantized states in an InGaAs/GaAs strained asymmetric triangular quantum well

Abstract

Photoreflectance (PR), contactless electroreflectance (CER) and piezoreflectance (PzR) measurements of an InGaAs/GaAs strained asymmetric triangular quantum well (ATQW) heterostructure as a function of temperature in the range of 20 to 300 K have been carried out. The structure was fabricated by molecular beam epitaxy using the digital alloy compositional grading method. A careful analysis of the PR, CER and PzR spectra has led to the identification of various excitonic transitions, mnH(L), between the mth conduction band state to the nth heavy(light)-hole band state. Comparison of the observed intersubband transitions with a theoretical calculation based on the envelope function model, including the effects of strain, provide a self-consistent check of the ATQW composition profile. The detailed study of the temperature dependence of the excitonic transition energies indicates that the potential profile of the ATQW varies at different temperatures. The parameters that describe the temperature dependence of are evaluated. The anomalous behaviour of the temperature dependence of the linewidth of 11H, , is compared with recent results for GaAs/AlGaAs and InGaAs/GaAs symmetric rectangular quantum wells of comparable dimensions.