NUMERICAL STUDY OF TEMPERATURE EFFECT ON CARRIER DYNAMICS IN MULTIPLE-QUANTUM-WELL NARROW WIRES

To clarify the effect of temperature on the wire width dependence of the photoluminescence (PL) decay time in multiple quantum well narrow wires, we performed numerical calculations of carrier dynamics using a simple damage model in which nonradiative recombination centers caused by fabrication damage near the wire sidewalls are considered. The drastic reduction of PL decay time around a 100-nm-wide wire at low temperature is explained by our damage model by the presence of an optically inactive layer, i.e., a so-called ''dead layer'' in which carriers vanish almost immediately due to heavy damage before reaching the sidewall. Our calculations show that the length of the ''dead layer'' changes with temperature even though the length of the damaged layer, in which defects are formed during fabrication process, is independent of temperature.