Dependence of the radiative lifetime on the type-II band offset in GaAsxSb1−x/GaAs quantum dots including effects of photoexcited carriers

Abstract

In quantum dot (QD) heterostructures that have a type-II band alignment, either the electron or the hole is confined inside the QD. Due to smaller electron–hole overlap in such structures, relatively long radiative lifetimes can be realized, which is beneficial for devices such as intermediate-band solar cells. The use of GaAsxSb1− x/GaAs QDs allows us to control the energy level of the confined state by changing the type-II conduction-band offset (CBO) without the need of changing the QD size. However, the dependence of the radiative lifetime τr on the CBO needs to be considered to achieve optimum device performance. In this work, GaAsxSb1− x/GaAs QDs were grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The amount of deposition was controlled to obtain QDs with approximately the same size even for different values of As composition x, and the carrier lifetime was determined by time-resolved photoluminescence measurements. Since the CBO becomes smaller for larger values of x, a simple model would predict a larger electron–hole overlap for larger x values, and thus, the lifetime should decrease monotonically. However, the experimentally obtained lifetime does not decrease monotonically, which has interesting implications for applications. We explain the observed trend by the effect of photoexcited carriers; a triangular potential well is formed around the QDs in the case of high excitation densities, and thus, electrons are localized near the QDs. We also calculated τr considering the effect of photoexcited carriers to confirm our model, and a similar tendency was obtained.