The kinetics of exciton photoluminescence in mercuric iodide

Time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) of red mercuric iodide single crystal is measured at low temperatures and its two-photon luminescence is measured at room temperature. Sharp near band-gap luminescence is observed around 530 nm and was ascribed to radiative annihilation of free and bound excitons; the phonon replica of exciton luminescence are found between 533 and 540 nm at low temperatures. TRPL experiment reveals that near band-gap luminescence comprises fast and slow decay components and shows the different relaxation processes between free and bound exciton annihilation. Luminescence of bound excitons steeply lowers with increasing temperature and disappears about 40 K. A luminescence tail band is observed around 540 nm that is ascribed to defects in the anion sublattice. The temporal behavior of the tail band is described by rate equations very well. A broad luminescent band appears at 630 nm. The decay curves suggest that the luminescence is ascribed to the radiative recombination of donor-acceptor pairs and there are two kinds of mechanisms to control the decay. At room temperature, a luminescent band appears at the band-gap region, which shows the band-gap at room temperature is about 2.125 eV.     

Effect of heteroboundary spreading on the properties of exciton states in Zn(Cd)Se/ZnMgSSe quantum wells

Exciton states in Zn(Cd)Se/ZnMgSSe quantum wells with different diffusion spreading of interfaces are studied by optical spectroscopy methods. It is shown that the emission spectrum of quantum wells at low temperatures is determined by free excitons and bound excitons on neutral donors. The nonlinear dependence of the stationary photoluminescence intensity on the excitation power density and the biexponential luminescence decay are explained by the neutralization of charged defects upon photoexcitation of heterostructures. With the stationary illumination on, durable (about 40 min) reversible changes in the reflection coefficient near the exciton resonances of quantum wells are observed. It is shown that, along with the shift of exciton levels, the spreading of heteroboundaries leads to three effects: an increase in the excitonphonon interaction, an increase in the energy shift between the emission lines of free and bound excitons, and a decrease in the decay time of exciton luminescence in a broad temperature range. The main reasons for these effects are discussed.     

Abnormal Energy Dependence of Photoluminescence Decay Time in InGaN Epilayer

We employ photoluminescence (PL) and time-resolved PL to study exciton localization effect in InGaN epilayers.By measuring the exciton decay time as a function of the monitored emission energy at different temperatures,we have found unusual behaviour of the energy dependence in the PL decay process. At low temperature, the measured PL decay time increases with the emission energy. It decreases with the emission energy at 200K, and remains nearly constant at the intermediate temperature of 12OK. We have studied the dot size effect on the radiative recombination time by calculating the temperature dependence of the exciton recombination lifetime in quantum dots, and have found that the observed behaviour can be well correlated to the exciton localization in quantum dots. This suggestion is further supported by steady state PL results.     

Recombination dynamics of free and bound excitons in bulk GaN

We report new data on the transient photoluminescence behaviour of free and donor bound excitons in high quality bulk GaN material grown by HVPE. With 266 nm photoexcitation the no-phonon free exciton has a short decay time, about 100 ps at 2 K, assigned to nonradiative surface recombination. The LO replicas of the free exciton have a much longer decay at 2 K, about 1.4 ns, believed to be a lower bound for the bulk radiative lifetimes of the free excitons at 2 K. The donor bound exciton no-phonon lines exhibit a rather short (about 300 ps) nonexponential decay at 2 K, which appears to be dominated by a scattering process. The corresponding LO replicas and the two-electron transitions have a much longer decay. From the latter, the lower bound of the radiative lifetime of the O- and Si-bound excitons are 1800 ps and 1100 ps, respectively.     

Temperature dependent photoluminescence processes in ZnO thin films grown on sapphire by pulsed laser deposition

Temperature dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) transitions in the range of 10–300 K was studied for ZnO thin films grown on sapphire by pulsed laser deposition. The low temperature PL spectra were dominated by recombination of donor bound excitons (B_X) and their phonon replicas. With increasing temperature, free exciton (F_X) PL and the associated LO phonon replicas increased in intensity at the expense of their bound counterparts. The B_X peak with line width of ∼6 meV at 10 K exhibited thermal activation energy of ∼17 meV, consistent with the exciton-defect binding energy. The separation between the F_X and B_X peak positions was found to reduce with increasing temperature, which was attributed to the transformation of B_X into the shallower donor bound exciton complexes at consecutive lower energy states with increasing temperature, which are possible in ZnO. The energy separation between F_X peak and its corresponding 1-LO phonon replica showed stronger dependence on temperature than that of 2-LO phonon replica. However, their bound counterparts did not exhibit this behavior. The observed temperature dependence of the energy separation between the free exciton and it is LO phonon replicas are explained by considering the kinetic energy of free exciton. The observed PL transitions and their temperature dependence are consistent with observations made with bulk ZnO crystals implying high crystalline and optical quality of the grown films.     

Temperature dependence of radiative recombination in CdSe quantum dots with enhanced confinement

We studied in details the recombination dynamics and its temperature dependence in epitaxially grown neutral CdSe/ZnSSe quantum dots with additional wide-band gap MgS barriers. Such design allows to preserve a very high quantum yield and track the radiative recombination dynamics up to room temperature. A fast initial decay of ∼0.6 ns followed by a slow decay with a time constant ∼30–50 ns is observed at low temperature T < 50 K. The fast decay gradually disappears with increasing temperature while the slow decay shortens and above 100 K predominantly a single-exponential decay is observed with a time constant ∼1.3 ns, which is weekly temperature dependent up to 300 K. To explain the experimental findings, a two-level model which includes bright and dark exciton states and a temperature dependent spin-flip between them is considered. According to the model, it is a thermal activation of the dark exciton to the bright state and its consequent radiative recombination that results in the long decay tail at low temperature. The doubling of the decay time at high temperatures manifests a thermal equilibrium between the dark and bright excitons.     

Exciton localization behaviour in different well width undoped GaN/Al0.07Ga0.93N nanostructures

We report results from optical spectroscopy such as photoluminescence (PL) and time resolved photo-luminescence (TRPL) techniques from different well width MOCVD grown GaN/Al_0.07Ga_0.93N MQW samples. There is evidence of localization at low temperature in all samples. The decay time of all samples becomes non-exponential when the detection energy is increased with respect to the peak of the emission. Localization of carriers (excitons) is demonstrated by the “S-shape” dependences of the PL peak energies on the temperature. The time-resolved PL spectra of the 3-nm well multi quantum wells reveal that the spectral peak position shifts toward lower energies as the decay time increases and becomes red-shifted at longer decay times. There is a gradient in the PL decay time across the emission peak profile, so that the PL process at low temperatures is a free electron-localized hole transition.     

CdTe/CdZnTe多量子阱激子复合动力学性质的研究

报道了分子束外延制备的高质量CdTe/Cd_0.64Zn_0.36Te多量子阱结构的光学性质,由变温光致发光光谱讨论了随温度升高辐射线展宽和辐射复合效率降低的机理.在变密度激发的皮秒时间分辨光谱中,发现不同激发密度下发光衰减时间不同,并研究了它的机理.在高激发密度下观测到n=2的重空穴激子发光. 关键词：     

Temperature-dependent luminescence dynamics for ZnO thin films

The paper presents the photoluminescence investigation of zinc oxide thin films. A high quality ZnO films fabricated by dip-coating (sol–gel) method were grown on quartz wafers. The films with different thickness (number of layers) were annealed at different temperatures after the preparation process. It was found that high quality, transparent ZnO thin films could be produced on quartz substrates at relatively low annealing temperature (450–550  $^{\circ }\mathrm{C}$ ). The dependence of the ZnO thin film quality was studied by X-ray diffraction and atomic force microscopy techniques. Optical properties were investigated by classic and time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) measurements. Photoluminescence spectra allowed us to estimate energy of the free excitons, bond excitons and their longitudinal optical (LO) phonon replicas as a function of the annealing temperature. An innovative TRPL technique let us precisely measure the decay time of the free- and bond excitons’ in the real time. TRPL measurements as a function of temperature reveal a biexponential decay behavior with typical free/bound exciton decay constants of 970/5310 ps for the as-grown sample and 1380/5980 ps after annealing process. Presented spectra confirm high structural and optical quality of investigated films. We proved that the thermal treatment improve both optical and structural quality and extend the photoluminescence’s lifetimes. The obtained experimental results are important for identification of exciton’s peaks and their LO phonon replicas for the investigated ZnO films.     

Variation of photoluminescence spectral line shape of monolayer WS2

The origin of the variation of photoluminescence (PL) spectra of monolayer tungsten disulfide (WS₂) is investigated systematically. Dependence of the PL spectrum on the excitation power show that the relatively sharp component corresponds to excitons whereas the broader component at slightly lower energy corresponds to negatively charged trions. PL imaging and second harmonic generation measurements show that the trion signals are suppressed more than the exciton signals near the edges, thereby relatively enhancing the excitonic feature in the PL spectrum and that such relative enhancement of the exciton signals is more pronounced near approximately armchair edges. This effect is interpreted in terms of depletion of free electrons near the edges caused by structural defects and adsorption of electron acceptors such as oxygen atoms.     

Origins of green band emission in high-temperature annealed N-doped ZnO

Nitrogen-doped ZnO sample has been annealed in O₂ ambient at high temperature (1000 °C) to improve its photoluminescence property. Low-temperature photoluminescence spectra of the sample are dominated by three near-band-edge emissions at 3.377, 3.362, and 3.332 eV, which are ascribed to free exciton emission (FX_A), and neutral donor-bound exciton (D⁰X), and its two-electron satellite (TES), respectively. With increasing temperature in low temperature region, the intensity of FX_A increases and the green band (GB) shows a negative thermal quenching effect resulting from thermal dissociation of D⁰X with more free excitons and neutral donors formed. The doublet structure with energy space ∼30 meV and repeated separation of longitudinal-optical phonon energy of 72 meV are observed in GB at low temperatures. The temperature independent energy position of GB indicates a typical recombination characteristic within strongly localized complexes. The doublet structures are considered to originate from the ground and exited states of shallow donors recombining with deep acceptors such as zinc vacancies.     

ZnS中Te等电子中心的时间分辨光谱研究

用时间分辨光谱研究了很大的Te组分范围内的ZnS_1-xTe_x（x=00 05—085）合金的发光动力学特性，结果表明：不同形态的Te等电子中心具有不同的辐射复 合寿命，从几个ns到几十个ns的范围内变化，当x＝015左右时，寿命达到最大值（约 40ns）.其物理机理源于不同的Te等电子中心具有不同的局域化特性.当Te组分较小时，等 电子中心从Te₁逐渐演变到Te₂，Te₃或Te₄ 时，相应发光寿命增加，表现出不断增强 的激子发光局域化特性；而当Te组分较大时，Te原子团变得较大，其局域势与基体原子势的 相互作用增强，等电子中心的局域化特性减弱，而基体价带扩展态特征变得明显起来，相应 发光寿命逐渐减小.还研究了激子束缚能随Te组分的变化以及发光强度随温度的变化关系， 所得结果进一步支持了时间分辨光谱研究所得到的结论. 关键词： ZnS 等电子中心 时间分辨光谱 局域态     

Bound excitons in p-doped GaAs quantum wells

Photoluminescence attributed to excitons bound to neutral impurities has been observed from GaAs quantum wells in Al_xGa_1?xAs-GaAs heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The quantum wells were either doped with [Be] ≈ 10¹⁷ cm^-3 or Zn-diffused. At low temperatures both single and multiple quantum wells exhibited this extrinsic luminescence which is ascribed to the radiative recombination of the n=1 ground state heavy hole exciton E_1h bound to a neutral acceptor A^o. The dissociation energy E_D of the A^o-E_1h complex is obtained directly from the measured separation of this extrinsic peak from the intrinsic E_1h free exciton peak. For 46Å wide GaAs wells, E_D=6.5meV and E_D decreases with increasing well width.     

半导体量子阱中自由激子稳态荧光特征

在不同晶格温度和不同激发光强度下，测量了四元系GaInAsSb/GaAlAsSb单量子阱中自由激子的荧光光谱，导出了稳态光谱测量条件下自由激子荧光强度与激发光强度和晶格温度的一般性公式.计算结果表明，激子相对占有数引起的温度和密度效应会影响激子发光的强度关系.根据本文的简单模型，线性比例系数I/I₀实际上综合地反映了量子阱中自由激子的荧光效率，而从激子荧光强度的Arrhenius图的最佳拟合中不仅可以得到激子的束缚能和激活能，而且还能估计出量子阱材料的本底浓度和散射时间常数. 关键词：     

Low-temperature photoluminescence in AgGaSe<Subscript>2</Subscript> single crystals

Photoluminescence spectra from a single-crystalline AgGaSe₂ ternary compound grown by the Bridgman-Stockbarger method from a nonstoichiometric melt are studied in the temperature interval 8–300 K under various excitation levels. The spectra contain emission bands associated with donor-acceptor recombination, as well as with bound and free excitons. The exciton binding energy and the energy gap of the AgGaSe₂ crystals are evaluated. The temperature dependence of the energies of bound and free excitons, as well as of the energy gap of the crystals, is constructed.     

The luminescence of II–VI compounds with blende type structure under high excitation

The luminescence of ZnSe is investigated as a function of excitation intensity for temperatures between 5 K and 300 K. At low excitation we observe emission due to free and bound excitons and due to donor-acceptor pair recombination. At higher excitation, the emission is dominated by inelastic exciton-exciton and exciton-free carrier scattering at lower and higher temperatures, respectively. A “M-band” observed in ZnSe and ZnTe is tentatively ascribed to a biexciton decay. The biexciton binding energies are 2±1 meV for ZnSe and 1,5±1 meV for ZnTe.     

Anomalous optical transitions in AlInGaN/GaN heterostructures grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

Using temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) measurements, we report a comprehensive study on optical transitions in Al_yIn_xGa_1−x−yN epilayer with target composition, x=0.01 and y=0.07 and varying epilayer thickness of 40, 65 and 100 nm. In these quaternary alloys, we have observed an anomalous PL temperature dependence such as an S-shape band-edge PL peak shift and a W-shape spectral broadening with an increase in temperature. With an increase in excitation power density, the emission peak from the AlInGaN epilayers shows a blue shift at 100 K and a substantial red shift at room temperature. This is attributed to the localization of excitons at the band-tail states at low temperature. Compared to 40 and 65 nm thick epilayers, the initial blue shift observed with low excitation power from 100 nm thick AlInGaN epilayer at room temperature is caused by the existence of deeper localized states due to confinement effects arising from higher In and Al incorporation. The subsequent red shift of the PL peak can be attributed by free motion of delocalized carriers that leads to bandgap renormalization by screening. Due to competing effects of exciton and free carrier recombination processes, such behavior of optical transitions leads to two different values of exponent ‘k’ in the fitting of PL emission intensity as a function of excitation power.     

Quantum wire lasers with high uniformity formed by cleaved-edge overgrowth with growth-interrupt anneal

High-quality T-shaped quantum wire lasers are fabricated by cleaved-edge overgrowth with the molecular beam epitaxy on the interface improved by a growth-interrupt high-temperature anneal. Micro-photoluminescence (PL) and PL excitation spectroscopy reveals unprecedented high quality of the wires, and structures of one-dimensional (1D) free excitons and 1D continuum states. At high pumping levels, PL evolves from a sharp free exciton peak via a biexciton peak to a red-shifted broad band. Lasing has been achieved with low lasing threshold. The lasing energy is on the red-shifted broad band and is about 5 meV below the free exciton. The observed shift excludes free excitons in lasing, and suggests contribution of highly Coulomb-correlated electron-hole plasma.     

Excitation spectroscopy,Raman scattering and the temperature dependence of the luminescence in highly excited red HgI2

The luminescence of red HgI₂ is investigated as a function of temperature, excitation intensity and wavelength. At high excitation intensity and low temperature an “M-band” emission dominates. This M-band is assigned to biexciton decay and bound exciton scattering with acoustic phonons (“acoustic wing”), this assumption being supported by the results of excitation spectroscopy. The energy of the biexciton is determined to be (4661 ± 1) meV. From the evaluation of Raman spectra, the phonon energies (1.9, 3.1 and 14.0 ± 0.2) meV are found. At higher temperatures two lines are observed, one of which is ascribed to exciton-free carrier scattering. Position and line shape are in good agreement with theoretical results. The other emission line is found to be due to scattering involving excitons or carriers bound to lattice defects.     

Excitation spectroscopy on the M-band of red HgI2

The luminescence of red HgI₂ is investigated as a function of excitation intensity and -wavelength. At low excitation, emission is due to free and bound exciton recombination, at high levels a “M-band” is dominating. This M-band is partially ascribed to biexciton decay, this assumption being supported by resonances found in the excitation spectra. The biexciton binding energy is determined to be 6±1 meV.