Photoluminescence probing of non-radiative channels in hydrogenated In(Ga)As/GaAs quantum dots

We report here on the efficient use of hydrogenation as a tool to investigate the intrinsic properties of non-radiative recombination channels in a low-pressure metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy grown quantum dots (QDs) array emitting around 1.3 mum. It is shown that hydrogenation reduces by a factor of two the flow of charge carriers to non-radiative channels in QDs related to the presence of impurities and further suppresses completely the non-radiative recombinations originating from the stacking faults and dangling bonds. Most importantly, hydrogenation improves the room temperature photoluminescence intensity of the the approximate to 1.3 mum emitting ln(Ga)As/GaAs QDs by a factor close to ten. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.