Temperature influence on optical charging of self-assembled InAs/GaAs semiconductor quantum dots

It is demonstrated that the photoluminescence spectra of single self-assembled InAs/GaAs quantum dots are very sensitive to excitation energy and crystal temperature. This is qualitatively explained in terms of the effective diffusivity of photogenerated particles, which affects the capture probability of the quantum dot. As a consequence, this opens the possibility of controlling the average number of excess electrons in the quantum dot by optical means. This technique may be used as a simple tool to create and study charged exciton complexes without any specially fabricated samples. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.