Systematic study of surface morphology, photoluminescence efficiency, and spin-detection sensitivity in (110)-oriented GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

• Published in: Japanese Journal of Applied Physics Vol. 55; no. 11; pp. 113001 - 113005
• Main Authors: Iba, Satoshi, Saito, Hidekazu, Watanabe, Ken, Ohno, Yuzo, Yuasa, Shinji
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: The Japan Society of Applied Physics 01.11.2016
• ISSN: 0021-4922; 1347-4065
• DOI: 10.7567/JJAP.55.113001

We prepared (110)-oriented GaAs/AlGaAs multiple-quantum-well (MQW) samples by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) under different growth conditions, and conducted systematic measurements of surface morphology, photoluminescence (PL), and spin-detection sensitivity at room temperature. Excellent surface flatness and high PL intensity were observed for the samples grown at temperatures ≥450 °C and As4/Ga flux ratios ≥40. It was found that the PL intensity of (110) MQWs was higher than that of the conventional (100) MQWs grown using the same MBE system. At the same time, we confirmed that the spin-detection sensitivity of (110) MQWs we obtained was an order of magnitude higher than that of the (100) MQWs. These results suggest that the newly developed (110) MQWs indeed have greater advantages than the conventional (100) MQWs for use in emerging spin-optical devices such as spin-controlled lasers.