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The effect of strain relaxation in a relaxed InAs quantum dot ͑QD͒ capped with InGaAs is investigated by admittance and deep-level transient spectroscopy ͑DLTS͒. Strain relaxation markedly increases the emission time in the QD region and extends carrier depletion to the bottom GaAs layer. The experimental data show the presence of relaxation traps in the QD region and the neighboring bottom GaAs layer. The electron emission from the QD region is governed by a trap located at 0.17-0.21 eV below the QD ground state. The electron-escape process is identified as thermal activation at high temperatures and direct tunneling at low temperatures from the trap. In the bottom GaAs layer near the QD, DLTS reveals a relaxation trap at 0.37-0.41 eV relative to the GaAs conduction band. The energy difference between these two traps is comparable to the QD ground-state energy relative to the GaAs conduction-band edge, suggesting that the two traps may be the same trap which is pinned to the GaAs conduction band. The considerable difference between their properties may result from different atoms surrounding the trap.

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Strain relaxation in InAs/InGaAs quantum dots (QDs) is shown to introduce misfits in the QD and neighboring GaAs bottom layer. A capacitance-voltage profiling shows an electron accumulation peak at the QD with a long emission time, followed by additional carrier depletion caused by the misfits in the GaAs bottom layer. The emission-time increase is explained by the suppression of tunneling for the QD excited states due to the additional carrier depletion. As a result, electrons are thermally activated from the QD states to the GaAs conduction band, consistent with observed emission energies of 0.160 and 0.068 eV which are comparable to the confinement energies of the QD electron ground and first-excited states, respectively, relative to the GaAs conduction band. This is in contrast to non-relaxed samples in which emission energy of 60 meV is observed, corresponding to the emission from the QD ground state to the first-excited state.