Thermal quenching of luminescence from buried and surface InGaAs self-assembled quantum dots with high sheet density

Variable-temperature photoluminescence PL spectra of Si-doped self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots QDs with and without GaAs cap layers were measured. Narrow and strong emission peak at 1075 nm and broad and weak peak at 1310 nm were observed for the buried and surface QDs at low temperature, respectively. As large as 210 meV redshift of the PL peak of the surface QDs with respect to that of the buried QDs is mainly due to the change of the strain around QDs before and after growth of the GaAs cap layer. Using the developed localized-state luminescence model, we quantitatively calculate the temperature dependence of PL peaks and integrated intensities of the two samples. The results reveal that there exists a large difference in microscopic mechanisms of PL thermal quenching between two samples. © 2005 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2112176