Ya. Zhang et al., LOW-TEMPERATURE PHOTOLUMINESCENCE OF DISORDERED THIN-LAYER GAAS ALAS SUPERLATTICES - EXPERIMENT/, Physical review. B, Condensed matter, 53(11), 1996, pp. 7426-7433
Low-temperature photoluminescence spectra for various disordered thin-
layer (GaAs)(m)(AlAs)(n) superlattices have been experimentally studie
d. The samples were grown by molecular-beam expitaxy (MBE) growth, and
disorder was introduced by varying the thickness of GaAs and AlAs lay
ers in the growth direction in various specific but randomly generated
sequences. The photoluminescence from disordered superlattice samples
shows a strong disorder sequence dependence. Disordered (GaAs)(m)(AlA
s)(n) superlattices with m,n distributed in a range of 1-6 shows mainl
y a sharp peak at the high-energy side and a broad peak at the low-ene
rgy side. According to the study of the temperature, excitation-intens
ity, and disorder-sequence dependence of the photoluminescence, the sh
arp peak is assigned to bound-exciton recombination and the broad peak
to the recombination of electron-hole pairs localized by a disorder p
otential induced by layer thickness disorder. Samples with m,n larger
than 6 exhibit multiple peaks of similar recombination mechanism. In a
ddition, the results demonstrate that the luminescence intensity of di
sordered superlattices at T=10 K can be increased by up to two orders
of magnitude over that of ordered short-period superlattices.