Anti-Stokes photoluminescence probing k-conservation and thermalization of minority carriers in degenerately doped semiconductors.

It has recently been found that anti-Stokes photoluminescence can be observed in degenerately n-doped indium phosphide nanowires, when exciting directly into the electron gas. This anti-Stokes mechanism has not been observed before and allows the study of carrier relaxation and recombination using standard photoluminescence techniques. It is important to know if this anti-Stokes photoluminescence also occurs in bulk semiconductors as well as its relation to carrier recombination and relaxation. Here we show that similar anti-Stokes photoluminescence can indeed be observed in degenerately doped bulk indium phosphide and gallium arsenide and is caused by minority carriers scattering to high momenta by phonons. We find in addition that the radiative electron-hole recombination is highly momentum-conserving and that photogenerated minority carriers recombine before relaxing to the band edge at low temperatures. These observations challenge the use of models assuming thermalization of minority carriers in the analysis of highly doped devices.

Photon upconversion in degenerately sulfur doped InP nanowires.

Radiative recombination in degenerately n-doped InP nanowires is studied for excitation above and below the Fermi energy of the electron gas, using photoluminescence. Laser-induced electron heating is observed, which allows absorption below the Fermi energy. We observe photon upconversion where photo-excited holes recombine with high |k| electrons. This can be attributed to hole scattering to high |k|-values, and the temperature dependence of this process is measured. We show that hole relaxation via phonon scattering can be observed in continuous wave excitation luminescence measurements.

Exciton fine structure splitting in InP quantum dots in GaInP.

We have investigated the electronic structure of excitons in InP quantum dots in GaInP. The exciton is theoretically expected to have four states. Two of the states are allowed to optically decay to the ground (vacuum) state in the dipole approximation. We see these two lines in photoluminescence (PL) experiments and find that the splitting between the lines (the fine structure splitting) is 150(± 30) µeV. The lines were perpendicularly polarized. We verified that the lines arise from neutral excitons by using correlation spectroscopy. The theoretical calculations show that the polarization of the emission lines are along and perpendicular to the major axis of elongated dots. The fine structure splitting depends on the degree of elongation of the dots and is close to zero for dots of cylindrical symmetry, despite the influence of the piezoelectric polarization, which is included in the calculation.

Core-shell InP-CdS nanowires: fabrication and study.

InP nanowires are fabricated by organo-metallic vapour phase epitaxy and studied via photoluminescence measurements performed on single nanowires, finding evidence of state filling with increasing excitation power density. To increase flexibility in fabrication technology we developed a wet chemical procedure to grow a CdS shell on these wires. In these InP-CdS wires the luminescence efficiency was decreased with respect to the bare wires. The CdS capping procedure needs further investigations to improve the emission properties of nanowires, in order to become technically useful. We suggest as possible improvements of this technique to increase the bath temperature and/or illuminate the sample with UV radiation during the capping procedure.

Quantum-confinement effects in InAs-InP core-shell nanowires.

We report the detection of quantum confinement in single InAs-InP core-shell nanowires. The wires, having an InAs core with ∼25 nm diameter, are characterized by emission spectra in which two peaks are identified under high excitation intensity conditions. The peaks are caused by emission from the ground and excited quantized levels, due to quantum confinement in the plane perpendicular to the nanowire axis. We have identified different energy contributions in the emission spectra, related to the wurtzite structure of the wires, the strain between the wurtzite core and the shell, and the confinement energy of the InAs core. Calculations based on six-band strain-dependent [Formula: see text] theory allow the theoretical estimation of the confined energy states in such materials, and we found these results to be in good agreement with those from the photoluminescence studies.

Optical studies of individual InAs quantum dots in GaAs: few-particle effects

Optical emission from individual strained indium arsenide (InAs) islands buried in gallium arsenide (GaAs) was studied. At low excitation power density, the spectra from these quantum dots consist of a single line. At higher excitation power density, additional emission lines appeared at both higher and lower energies, separated from the main line by about 1 millielectron volt. At even higher excitation power density, this set of lines was replaced by a broad emission peaking below the original line. The splittings were an order of magnitude smaller than the lowest single-electron or single-hole excited state energies, indicating that the fine structure results from few-particle interactions in the dot. Calculations of few-particle effects give splittings of the observed magnitude.