PHOTOREFLECTANCE AND PIEZOPHOTOREFLECTANCE STUDIES OF STRAINED-LAYER INXGA1-XAS-GAAS QUANTUM-WELLS

In this paper we present an investigation of the optical transitions in strained InxGa1-xAs-GaAs single and multiple quantum wells, for indium content x congruent-to 10% and 20% and various well widths. The uni-axial stress dependence of reflectance and photoreflectance spectra permits unambiguous assignment of the experimental features to electron-heavy-hole and electron-light-hole excitonic transitions. Calculated transition energies are compared with the measured values. In these calculations, in the envelope-function formalism, the misfit-strain-induced coupling between the GAMMA8 light-hole and the GAMMA7 split-off valence bands is taken into account and the valence-band offset ratio is chosen as an adjustable parameter. By fitting all the experimental results to our calculations, the heavy-hole valence-band offset fraction Q(vh) is determined to be about 0.34. This implies that these quantum wells are type I for the electron-heavy-hole system and type II for the electron-light-hole system, with the electrons and the heavy holes confined in the InxGa1-xAs layers and the light holes in the GaAs barrier regions.