Carrier Injection to In0.4Ga0.6As/GaAs Surface Quantum Dots in Coupled Hybrid Nanostructures

Abstract

Stacking growth of the InGaAs quantum dots (QDs) on top of a carrier injection layer is a very useful strategy to develop QD devices. This research aims to study the carrier injection effect in hybrid structures with a layer of In0.4Ga0.6As surface quantum dots (SQDs), coupled to an injection layer of either one layer of In0.4Ga0.6As buried QDs (BQDs) or an In0.15Ga0.85As quantum well (QW), both through a 10 nm GaAs thin spacer. Spectroscopic measurements show that carrier capture and emission efficiency for SQDs in the BQD injection structure is better than that of the QW injection, due to strong physical and electrical coupling between the two QD layers. In the case of QW injection, although most carriers can be collected into the QW, they then tunnel into the wetting layer of the SQDs and are subsequently lost to surface states via non-radiative recombination. Therefore, the QW as an injection source for SQDs may not work as well as the BQDs for stacking coupled SQDs structures.