Presentation and experimental validation of a model for the effect of thermal annealing on the photoluminescence of self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots

We present a model for the effect of thermal annealing on a single-layer InAs/GaAs quantum dot (QD) heterostructure and study the corresponding variation in full photoluminescence (PL) spectrum. In/Ga interdiffusion due to annealing is modeled by Fickian diffusion and the Schrodinger equation is solved separately for electrons and holes to obtain ground state PL peaks of the heterostructure at different annealing temperatures. We theoretically examine the decrease in strain effects and carrier confinement potentials with annealing. PL spectra of the entire ensemble of QDs, annealed at different temperatures, are calculated from a lognormal distribution of QD heights derived from experimental atomic force microscopy (AFM) data. Results from our calculations, which illustrate the blueshift in emission wavelength and linewidth variation in PL with annealing, are in excellent agreement with experimental PL observations on the same samples. This highlights the potential of the model to assist in precisely engineering the optical properties of QD materials for specific device applications. Moreover, the simplicity of the model and its multiple useful features including computation of material interdiffusion, band profiles and full PL spectra make it a valuable tool to study annealing effects on QD heterostructures. (C) 2010 [doi: 10.1063/1.3431388