Strain relaxation effect on electronic properties of compressively strained InGaAs/InP vertically stacked multiple quantum wires

Abstract

Electronic properties of compressively strained InGaAs/InP vertically stacked multiple quantum wires were investigated using an six-band strain-dependent k.p Hamiltonian. The strain tensor epsilon(yy) (epsilon(xx)) is found to relax from its initial strain. The amount of relaxation is dependent on the number of wire layers in the vertical stack and increases with the number of wire layers. The interband transition energy also decreases with the number of wire layers. This is mainly attributed to the decrease in the conduction band energy because subband energies in the valence band are nearly independent of the strain. The matrix element is shown to slightly decrease with increasing number of the wire layer in the vertical stack. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3456073]