Sub-monolayer quantum dots in confinement enhanced dots-in-a-well heterostructure

Abstract

We have investigated optical properties and device performance of sub-monolayer quantum dots infrared photodetector with confinement enhancing (CE) barrier and compared with conventional Stranski-Krastanov quantum dots with a similar design. This quantum dots-in-a-well structure with CE barrier enables higher quantum confinement and increased absorption efficiency due to stronger overlap of wavefunctions between the ground state and the excited state. Normal incidence photoresponse peak is obtained at 7.5 μm with a detectivity of 1.2 × 1011 cm Hz1/2 W−1 and responsivity of 0.5 A/W (77 K, 0.4 V, f/2 optics). Using photoluminescence and spectral response measurements, the bandstructure of the samples were deduced semi-empirically.