Growth of highly strained InGaAs quantum wells on GaAs substrates - Effect of growth rate

Highly strained In_xGa_1-xAs (x∼0.5) quantum wells were grown on GaAs substrates at low temperature by metal organic vapor-phase epitaxy. By depositing this material in the kinetically limited growth regime, high-quality pseudomorphic layers were obtained. It was found that by using an extremely slow growth rate, the Stranski-Krastanov transition for self-assembled quantum dots formation could be suppressed and the resulting layer had very smooth surface morphology. It is suggested that step flow motion of adatoms dominates at such slow growth rates. By using this technique, a double quantum well structure with room temperature luminescence at 1215 nm and spectral linewidth of 48 meV was obtained.