Drastic ion-implantation-induced inter-mixing during the annealing of self-assembled InAs/InP(001) quantum dots

Abstract

This work examines the influence of post-growth phosphorus implantation followed by rapid thermal annealing on the photoluminescence (PL) emission from self-assembled InAs/InP(001) quantum dots (QDs). Upon annealing, the spectra reveal an atypical evolution, showing an increase in the emission bandwidth and the rise of a InAsP quantum-well-like peak. The overall emission exhibit a blueshift whose magnitude increases with annealing temperature and fluence up to ∼325 meV. The temperature threshold for a detectable PL shift, 400 °C, is considerably lower than the 725 °C value for unimplanted samples, thereby demonstrating the potential of ion-implantation-induced intermixing for spatially selective band gap tuning of InAs/InP QDs.