Energy separation and carrier-phonon scattering in CdZnTe/ZnTe quantum dots on Si substrate

Details of carrier dynamics in self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) with a particular attention to nonradiative processes are not only interesting for fundamental physics, but it is also relevant to performance of optoelectronic devices and the exploitation of nanocrystals in practical applications. In general, the possible processes in such systems can be considered as radiative relaxation, carrier transfer between dots of different dimensions, Auger nonradiactive scattering, thermal escape from the dot, and trapping in surface and/or defects states. Authors of recent studies have proposed a mechanism for the carrier dynamics of time-resolved photoluminescence CdTe (a type II-VI QDs) systems. This mechanism involves the activation of phonons mediated by electron-phonon interactions. Confinement of both electrons and holes is strongly dependent on the thermal escape process, which can include multi-longitudinal optical phonon absorption resulting from carriers trapped in QD surface defects. Furthermore, the discrete quantized energies in the QD density of states (1S, 2S, 1P, etc.) arise mainly from ${\delta}$-functions in the QDs, which are related to different orbitals. Multiple discrete transitions between well separated energy states may play a critical role in carrier dynamics at low temperature when the thermal escape processes is not available. The decay time in QD structures slightly increases with temperature due to the redistribution of the QDs into discrete levels. Among II-VI QDs, wide-gap CdZnTe QD structures characterized by large excitonic binding energies are of great interest because of their potential use in optoelectronic devices that operate in the green spectral range. Furthermore, CdZnTe layers have emerged as excellent candidates for possible fabrication of ferroelectric non-volatile flash memory. In this study, we investigated the optical properties of CdZnTe/ZnTe QDs on Si substrate grown using molecular beam epitaxy. Time-resolved and temperature-dependent PL measurements were carried out in order to investigate the temperature-dependent carrier dynamics and the activation energy of CdZnTe/ZnTe QDs on Si substrate.