Optical investigations of the band structure of strained InAs/AlInAs quantum wells

Abstract

We report photoluminescence and photoconductivity measurements on single InAs quantum wells under a 3.4% biaxial compression. The photoluminescence line, which is in the 1.2–1.6 μm wavelength range depending on well thickness, is interpreted as recombination between electrons and holes distributed over a range of confined energy states associated with quantum well width fluctuations. Photoconductivity is found to provide spectroscopic measurements of the optical transitions even for single, extremely thin quantum wells. We find excellent agreement between the measured transition energies and the result of an envelope function calculation taking into account the effect of both strain and quantum confinement.