Influence of proton-stripe realization process on the luminescence properties of (AlGa)As double heterostructures

Photoluminescence (PL) measurements using two different incident photon energies (one, higher than both GaAs and AlxGa1−xAs band-gap energies: indirect excitation; the other, higher than GaAs band-gap energy but less than Ga1−xAlxAs band-gap energy: direct excitation) have been conducted on proton-striped double heterostructures (DH) for cw lasers. These measurements performed inside and outside the stripe regions gave the following results: the luminescence from the regions inside the stripe, when measured under indirect excitation conditions is shown to be affected by the proton bombardment; also a simple heat treatment of these layers is found to restore this luminescence to a large extent. Some experimental evidence assuming the presence of nonradiative centers localized in the neighborhood of P-AlxGa1−xAs (confinement layer) and p-GaAs (active layer) heterointerface is presented and discussed.