Anti-Stokes photoluminescence probing k-conservation and thermalization of minority carriers in degenerately doped semiconductors

K. Mergenthaler*, N. Anttu, N. Vainorius, M. Aghaeipour, S. Lehmann, M. T. Borgström, L. Samuelson, M.-E. Pistol

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

6 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

It has recently been found that anti-Stokes photoluminescence can be observed in degenerately n-doped indium phosphide nanowires, when exciting directly into the electron gas. This anti-Stokes mechanism has not been observed before and allows the study of carrier relaxation and recombination using standard photoluminescence techniques. It is important to know if this anti-Stokes photoluminescence also occurs in bulk semiconductors as well as its relation to carrier recombination and relaxation. Here we show that similar anti-Stokes photoluminescence can indeed be observed in degenerately doped bulk indium phosphide and gallium arsenide and is caused by minority carriers scattering to high momenta by phonons. We find in addition that the radiative electron-hole recombination is highly momentum-conserving and that photogenerated minority carriers recombine before relaxing to the band edge at low temperatures. These observations challenge the use of models assuming thermalization of minority carriers in the analysis of highly doped devices.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1634
JournalNature Communications
Volume8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2017
MoE publication typeA1 Journal article-refereed

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