Effects of rapid thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dots

We present the effects of rapid thermal annealing on the structural and optical properties of InAs/GaAs self-assembled quantum dot structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy. Annealing at higher temperature results in an increase in island size, a corresponding decrease in the density of islands, and a redshift in the luminescence emission from the islands. The temperature dependence of the photoluminescence peak energy of the quantum dots for the unannealed and annealed samples is well described by the Varshni equation. The different values of thermal quenching activation energies for the unannealed and annealed samples indicate a variation of the quantum dot confining potential.