2-3 mu m mid infrared light sources using InGaAs/GaAsSb "W" type quantum wells on InP substrates

Abstract

We have investigated the InGaAs/GaAsSb/InAlGaAs/InAlAs type-II "W" quantum wells (QWs) grown on InP substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. The photoluminescence (PL) emission wavelength longer than 2.56 mu m at room temperature (RT) is demonstrated for the first time in this material system. The PL emission peaks of our designed samples can cover a wide range from 2 to 2.5 mu m at cryogenic temperature. The samples show good optical quality that the reduction in integrated PL intensity is only around one order of magnitude from 35 K to RT. We found that the integrated PL intensity decreased as the emission wavelength increased, which is due to the reduction in the electron-hole wave function overlap. This is consistent with the calculated result. In the power dependent PL measurements, the emission peak of "W" type QWs show blue shifts with the excitation power (P-ex) but does not follow the P-ex(1/3) rule as predicted by type-II band bending model. The localized states filling effect gives reasonable explanations for the observed phenomena. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3506427]