Optical and structural prorerties of InAs epilayer on graded InGaAs

Abstract

AbstractWe have studied infrared photoluminescence (PL) and x-ray diffraction (XRD) of 400 nm and 1500 nm thick InAs epilayers on GaAs, and 4 nm thick InAs on graded InGaAs layer with total thickness of 300 nm grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The PL peak positions of 400 nm, 1500 nm and 4 nm InAs epilayer measured at 10 K are blue-shifted from that of InAs bulk by 6.5, 4.5, and 6 meV, respectively, which can be largely explained by the residual strain in the epilayer. The residual strain caused by the lattice mismatch between InAs and GaAs or graded InGaAs/GaAs was observed from XRD measurements. While the PL peak position of 400 nm thick InAs layer is linearly shifted toward higher energy with increase in excitation intensity ranging from 10 to 140 mW, those of 4 nm InAs epilayer on InGaAs and 1500 nm InAs layer on GaAs is gradually blue-shifted and then, saturated above a power of 75 mW. These results suggest that adopting a graded InGaAs layer between InAs and GaAs can efficiently reduce the strain due to lattice mismatch in the structure of InAs/GaAs.