Effects of rapid thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots

We present the effects of rapid thermal annealing on the structural and opt ical properties of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dot structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Annealing at higher temperature results in an incr ease in island size, a corresponding decrease in the density of islands, an d a redshift in the luminescence emission from the islands. The temperature dependence of the photoluminescence peak energy of the quantum dots for th e unannealed and annealed samples is well described by the Varshni equation . The different values of thermal quenching activation energies for the una nnealed and annealed samples indicate a variation of the quantum dot confin ing potential.