Emission of electrons from the ground and first excited states of self-organized InAs GaAs quantum dot structures

Capacitance- and conductance-voltage studies have been carried out on Schottky barrier structures containing a sheet of self-organized InAs quantum dots. The dots are formed in GaAs n-type matrices after the deposition of four monolayers of InAs. Quasi-static analysis of capacitance-voltage measurements indicates that there are at least two filled electron levels in the quantum dots, located 60 and 140 meV below the GaAs conduction band edge. The conductance of the structure depends on the balance between measurement frequency and the thermionic emission rate of carriers from the quantum dots. An investigation of the temperature-dependent conductance at different frequencies as a function of the reverse bias allows us to study separately the electron emission rates from the ground and first excited levels in the quantum dots. We estimate that the electron escape times from both levels of the quantum dots become comparable at room temperature and equal to about 100 ps.