No Arabic abstract
We present a comprehensive study of the optical properties of InAs/InP self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) using an empirical pseudopotential method and configuration interaction treatment of the many-particle effects. The results are compared to those of InAs/GaAs QDs. The main results are: (i) The alignment of emission lines of neutral exciton, charged exciton and biexciton in InAs/InP QDs is quite different from that in InAs/GaAs QDs. (ii) The hidden correlation in InAs/InP QDs is 0.7 - 0.9 meV, smaller than that in InAs/GaAs QDs. (iii) The radiative lifetimes of neutral exciton, charged exciton and biexciton in InAs/InP QDs are about twice longer than those in InAs/GaAs QDs. (v) The phase diagrams of few electrons and holes in InAs/InP QDs differ greatly from those in InAs/GaAs QDs. The filling orders of electrons and holes are shown to obey the Hunds rule and Aufbau principle, and therefore the photoluminescence spectra of highly charged excitons are very different from those of InAs/GaAs QDs.
We investigate the electronic structure of the InAs/InP quantum dots using an atomistic pseudopotential method and compare them to those of the InAs/GaAs QDs. We show that even though the InAs/InP and InAs/GaAs dots have the same dot material, their electronic structure differ significantly in certain aspects, especially for holes: (i) The hole levels have a much larger energy spacing in the InAs/InP dots than in the InAs/GaAs dots of corresponding size. (ii) Furthermore, in contrast with the InAs/GaAs dots, where the sizeable hole $p$, $d$ intra-shell level splitting smashes the energy level shell structure, the InAs/InP QDs have a well defined energy level shell structure with small $p$, $d$ level splitting, for holes. (iii) The fundamental exciton energies of the InAs/InP dots are calculated to be around 0.8 eV ($sim$ 1.55 $mu$m), about 200 meV lower than those of typical InAs/GaAs QDs, mainly due to the smaller lattice mismatch in the InAs/InP dots. (iii) The widths of the exciton $P$ shell and $D$ shell are much narrower in the InAs/InP dots than in the InAs/GaAs dots. (iv) The InAs/GaAs and InAs/InP dots have a reversed light polarization anisotropy along the [100] and [1$bar{1}$0] directions.
We use a many-body, atomistic empirical pseudopotential approach to predict the multi-exciton emission spectrum of a lens shaped InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dot. We discuss the effects of (i) The direct Coulomb energies, including the differences of electron and hole wavefunctions, (ii) the exchange Coulomb energies and (iii) correlation energies given by a configuration interaction calculation. Emission from the groundstate of the $N$ exciton system to the $N-1$ exciton system involving $e_0to h_0$ and $e_1to h_1$ recombinations are discussed. A comparison with a simpler single-band, effective mass approach is presented.
We investigate the thermal quenching of the multimodal photoluminescence from InAs/InP (001) self-assembled quantum dots. The temperature evolution of the photoluminescence spectra of two samples is followed from 10 K to 300 K. We develop a coupled rate-equation model that includes the effect of carrier thermal escape from a quantum dot to the wetting layer and to the InP matrix, followed by transport, recapture or non-radiative recombination. Our model reproduces the temperature dependence of the emission of each family of quantum dots with a single set of parameters. We find that the main escape mechanism of the carriers confined in the quantum dots is through thermal emission to the wetting layer. The activation energy for this process is found to be close to one-half the energy difference between that of a given family of quantum dots and that of the wetting layer as measured by photoluminescence excitation experiments. This indicates that electron and holes exit the InAs quantum dots as correlated pairs.
The spin polarization of electrons trapped in InAs self-assembled quantum dot ensembles is investigated. A statistical approach for the population of the spin levels allows one to infer the spin polarization from the measure values of the addition energies. From the magneto-capacitance spectroscopy data, the authors found a fully polarized ensemble of electronic spins above 10 T when $mathbf{B}parallel[001]$ and at 2.8 K. Finally, by including the g-tensor anisotropy the angular dependence of spin polarization with the magnetic field $mathbf{B}$ orientation and strength could be determined.
We present here an atomistic theory of the electronic and optical properties of hexagonal InAsP quantum dots in InP nanowires in the wurtzite phase. These self-assembled quantum dots are unique in that their heights, shapes, and diameters are well known. Using a combined valence-force-field, tight-binding, and configuration-interaction approach we perform atomistic calculations of single-particle states and excitonic, biexcitonic and trion complexes as well as emission spectra as a function of the quantum dot height, diameter and As versus P concentration. The atomistic tight-binding parameters for InAs and InP in the wurtzite crystal phase were obtained by ab initio methods corrected by empirical band gaps. The low energy electron and hole states form electronic shells similar to parabolic or cylindrical quantum confinement, only weakly affected by hexagonal symmetry and As fluctuations. The relative alignment of the emission lines from excitons, trions and biexcitons agrees with that for InAs/InP dots in the zincblende phase in that biexcitons and positive trions are only weakly bound. The random distribution of As atoms leads to dot-to-dot fluctuations of a few meV for the single-particle states and the spectral lines. Due to the high symmetry of hexagonal InAsP nanowire quantum dots the exciton fine structure splitting is found to be small, of the order a few $mu$eV with significant random fluctuations in accordance with experiments.