Minority Carrier Lifetime and Interfacial Recombination Velocity in GaAs/AlGaAs Double Heterostructures

A novel technique is used to determine the minority carrier lifetimes, the interface recombination velocity, the internal radiative quantum efficiency, and the radiative recombination constant from PL decay measurements on a set of three samples and published theory. This technique is used to determine for the first time the minority carrier lifetimes of p-GaAs in double heterostructures that were grown by molecular beam epitaxy MBE at ARL. The results show the high quality of our bulk GaAs and the GaAsAlGaAs interface in double heterostructure samples, and provide guidance for studies aimed at improving the quality of GaAs grown by MBE at the U.S. Army Research Laboratory ARL.