Strain-induced photoreflectance spectra in the vicinity of the E 0 transition in GaAs/Si and InP/Si heterostructures

A study is reported of the structure of photoreflectance (PR) spectra in the vicinity of the E ₀ transition from thin (d=1–5 μm) n-GaAs and n-InP films (n=10¹⁶–10¹⁷ cm⁻³) grown epitaxially on Si(001) substrates. A quantitative analysis of the spectra involving multi-component fitting shows that the electronic optical transition from the {3/2;±1/2} subband provides a dominant contribution to the intermediate-field electromodulation component in both systems. The splitting observed in the GaAS/Si PR spectra near the main peak are accounted for not by the strain-induced valence-band splitting but rather by a spectral superposition of the intermediate-field component due to the {3/2;±1/2} subband with a low-energy excitonic component. The analytically established transition energy E ₀ ^3/2;±1/2 is used to calculate biaxial strains in epitaxial films. Fiz. Tverd. Tela (St. Petersburg) 41, 725–731 (April 1999)