Enhanced Photoluminescence of 1.3 μm InAs Quantum Dots Grown on Ultrathin GaAs Buffer/Si Templates by Suppressing Interfacial Defect Emission

We report on the photoluminescence enhancement of 1.3 μm InAs quantum dots (QDs) epitaxially grown on an ultrathin 250 nm GaAs buffer on a Si substrate. Decreasing the GaAs buffer thickness from 1000 to 250 nm was found to not only increase the coalesced QD density from 6.5 × 10⁸ to 1.9 × 10⁹ cm^-2 but also decrease the QD photoluminescence emission intensity dramatically. Inserting an Al_0.4Ga_0.6As potential barrier layer maintained strong photoluminescence from the QDs by effectively suppressing carrier leakage to the GaAs/Si interfacial region even when the GaAs buffer was thinned to 250 nm. We then fabricated a light-emitting diode using the ultrathin 250 nm GaAs buffer on Si and confirmed strong electroluminescence peaking at 1.28 μm without interfacial defect emission at room temperature. We believe that this work is promising for monolithically integrated evanescent Si lasers using InAs/GaAs QDs.