Optical studies of molecular beam epitaxy grown GaAsSbN∕GaAs single quantum well structures

In this work, the authors present a systematic study on the variation of the structural and the optical properties of GaAsSbNGaAs single quantum wells (SQWs) as a function of nitrogen concentration. These SQW layers were grown by the solid source molecular beam epitaxial technique. A maximum reduction of 328 meV in the photoluminescence (PL) peak energy of GaAsSbN was observed with respect to the reference GaAsSb QW. 8 K and RT PL peak energies of 0.774 eV (FWHM of ∼25 meV) and 0.729 eV (FWHM of ∼67 meV) (FWHM denotes full width at half maximum) corresponding to the emission wavelengths of 1.6 and 1.7 μm, respectively, have been achieved for a GaAsSbN SQW of N∼1.4%. The pronounced S -curve behavior of the PL spectra at low temperatures is a signature of exciton localization, which is found to decrease from 16 to 9 meV with increasing N concentration of 0.9%-2.5%. The diamagnetic shift of 13 meV observed in the magnetophotoluminescence spectra of the nitride sample with N∼1.4% is smaller in comparison to the value of 28 meV in the non-nitride sample, indicative of an enhancement in the electron effective mass in the nitride QWs. Electron effective mass of 0.065 mo has been estimated for a SQW with N∼1.4% using the band anticrossing model. © 2007 American Vacuum Society