Non-radiative recombination at dislocations in InAs quantum dots grown on silicon

We study the impact of misfit dislocations on the luminescence from InAs quantum dots (QDs) grown on Si substrates. Electron channeling contrast imaging is used together with cathodoluminescence mapping to locate misfit dislocations and characterize the resulting nonradiative recombination of carriers via near-infrared light emission profiles. With a 5 kV electron beam probe, the dark line defect width due to a typical misfit dislocation in a shallow QD active layer is found to be approximately 1 μm, with a 40%–50% peak emission intensity loss at room temperature. Importantly, we find that at cryogenic temperatures, the dislocations affect the QD ground state and the first excited state emission significantly less than the second excited state emission. At the same time, the dark line defect width, which partially relates to carrier diffusion in the system, is relatively constant across the temperature range of 10 K–300 K. Our results suggest that carrier dynamics in the QD wetting layer control emission intensity loss at dislocations, and that these defects reduce luminescence only at those temperatures where the probability of carriers thermalizing from the dots into the wetting layer becomes significant. We discuss the implications of these findings toward growing dislocation-tolerant, reliable quantum dot lasers on silicon.

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