Negative activation energy and dielectric signatures of excitons and excitonic Mott transitions in quantum confined laser structures

Bhunia, A.; Bansal, Kanika; Henini, M.; Alshammari, M.S.; Datta, Shouvik

Abstract

Mostly, optical spectroscopies are used to investigate the physics of excitons, whereas their electrical evidences are hardly explored. Here, we examined a forward bias activated differential capacitance response of GaInP/AlGaInP based multi-quantum well laser diodes to trace the presence of excitons using electrical measurements. Occurrence of “negative activation energy” after light emission is understood as thermodynamical signature of steady state excitonic population under intermediate range of carrier injections. Similar corroborative results are also observed in an InGaAs/GaAs quantum dot laser structure grown by molecular beam epitaxy. With increasing biases, the measured differential capacitance response slowly vanishes. This represents gradual Mott transition of an excitonic phase into an electron-hole plasma in a GaInP/AlGaInP laser diode. This is further substantiated by more and more exponentially looking shapes of high energy tails in electroluminescence spectra with increasing forward bias, which originates from a growing non-degenerate population of free electrons and holes. Such an experimental correlation between electrical and optical properties of excitons can be used to advance the next generation excitonic devices.

Citation

Bhunia, A., Bansal, K., Henini, M., Alshammari, M., & Datta, S. (in press). Negative activation energy and dielectric signatures of excitons and excitonic Mott transitions in quantum confined laser structures. Journal of Applied Physics, 120, Article 144304. https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4964850

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Oct 2, 2016
• Online Publication Date: Oct 13, 2016
• Deposit Date: Oct 19, 2016
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 19, 2016
• Journal: Journal of Applied Physics
• Print ISSN: 0021-8979
• Electronic ISSN: 1089-7550
• Publisher: American Institute of Physics
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 120
• Article Number: 144304
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4964850
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/823582
• Publisher URL: http://scitation.aip.org/content/aip/journal/jap
• Related Public URLs: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4964850
• Additional Information: This article may be downloaded for personal use only. Any other use requires prior permission of the author and AIP Publishing.