GAAS1-XPX GAAS QUANTUM-WELL STRUCTURES WITH TENSILE-STRAINED BARRIERS/

An investigation of GaAs QW's with tensile-strained GaAsP barriers gro wn on GaAs substrates by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy is reporte d. We demonstrate that this system permits light- and heavy-hole valen ce bands to be approximately merged within a wide range of well widths and strains, thereby increasing the yield of devices requiring these characteristics. A few series of quantum wells with three phosphorus c ompositions (6%, 9%, and 19%) were grown and studied by photoluminesce nce and polarized photoluminescence excitation spectroscopy. We compar ed our experimentally determined conduction band to heavy-hole and lig ht-hole transition energies with finite potential well calculations ut ilizing a previously developed strain dependent band offset model. We obtained excellent agreement between experimental and calculated resul ts without any adjustment or fitting of parameters.