CATHODOLUMINESCENCE STUDY OF GAAS QUANTUM-WELLS AND OF SUBMICRON DOTSFABRICATED BY MAGNETRON REACTIVE ION ETCHING

Cathodoluminescence has been employed to investigate the luminescence and lateral transport properties of excited carriers at 8 K in GaAs-Al GaAs quantum well material and in submicron features fabricated in thi s material by magnetron reactive ion etching. A carrier diffusion leng th of 0.85+/-0.04 mu m in quantum wells and a surface recombination ve locity (5.4+/-0.8)x 10(3) m/s at etched sidewalls were measured. Also, the effect of feature size on luminescence efficiency was examined an d compared with model calculations using the measured values of diffus ion length and surface recombination velocity. (C) 1997 American Insti tute of Physics.