In this report, we investigate the thermal relaxation of the photoluminescence (PL) in InAs/GaAs quantum dot superlattices with large thicknesses that have two to more than three times the critical thickness for spontaneous island formation. It is found that the linewidth first decreases and then increases with increasing temperature. In addition to thermionic emission, we suggest that carrier repopulation among quantum dots plays an important role in the PL quenching. The temperature dependence of PL peak energy following a Varshni relation was attributed to the dilation of lattice and electron-lattice interaction. The emission intensity quenches rapidly when the temperature rises to around 60 K, indicating the existence of defect-related centers in the vicinity of InAs/GaAs interfaces. In addition, we performed the measurement of the activation energy of PL quenching at different emission energy. We found that the loss mechanism of PL quenching based on the activation of electron-hole pairs from quantum dots to the adjacent barriers was difficult to explain the behavior in quantum dots with large thicknesses. In this case, we suggest that the PL quenching is dominated by the recombination through interface defects.

The wavelength dependence of the nonlinear refractive index and two-photon absorption coefficient near half the band gap was measured in an AlGaAs waveguide. The two photon figure of merit for efficient nonlinear optics in AlGaAs is shown to be quite favorable for photon energies less than one half the band gap.

The energy gap of dilute nitride GaAsSbN has been studied. We found that the energy gap reduction induced by nitrogen incorporation is nearly independent of the Sb composition of the alloy, indicating that the conduction band and the valence band can be independently manipulated by incorporating N and Sb, respectively. A “double” band anticrossing (BAC) model, which is a combination of a BAC model for GaAsN and a valence BAC model for GaAsSb with the localized levels and hybridization parameters reported in literatures, has been proposed to fit the energy gap of annealed GaAsSbN samples. The as-grown samples, however, are with lower energy gaps, most likely resulting from the existence of substitutional N pairing and clustering in the alloys.

We report the effects of In 0.33 Ga 0.67 As capping layers on the structural and optical properties of InAs self-organized quantum dots grown by gas-source molecular-beam epitaxy. With different deposition methods for the InGaAs capping layer, the quantum-dot density can be adjusted from 2.3ϫ10 10 to 1.7ϫ10 11 cm Ϫ2 . As-cleaved 3.98-mm-long diode laser using triple stacks of InAs quantum dots with the capping layer grown by GaAs/InAs sequential binary growth demonstrates an emission wavelength of 1305 nm and a threshold current density of 360 A/cm 2 . A ground-state saturation gain of 16.6 cm Ϫ1 is achieved due to the high dot density.