Thermal peculiarity of AlAs-capped InAs quantum dots in a GaAs matrix

Abstract

GaAs and AlAs thin capping layers as well as postgrowth rapid thermal annealing (RTA) were applied to InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown by molecular beam epitaxy to study the tunability of optical properties of QDs by photoluminescence (PL) methods. The PL of AlAs-capped QDs shows double-peak structure, as opposed to GaAs-capped QDs, which is due to the formation of two families of QDs in the AlAs-capped sample confirmed by the power dependent PL measurements. The PL peak of the GaAs-capped samples subjected to RTA showed blueshift and narrowing with an increase in RTA temperature. This is the result of thermally enhanced In–Ga intermixing. More complex changes in the PL spectrum of AlAs-capped QDs during the RTA procedure were found and explained by the different In compositions in two branches of QDs. The features observed in the temperature dependences of PL peak energy of GaAs- and AlAs-capped samples were interpreted in terms of thermal escape of carriers from smaller QDs with further redistribution between larger QDs and different InAs content in two families of QDs.