Thermal quenching of the photoluminescence from SiGe/Si quantum wells which had been grown by means of low-temperature molecular beam epitaxy was shown to be markedly improved by post-growth thermal annealing. The predominant mechanism that was responsible for this improvement was shown to be a reduction in the number of grown-in non-radiative defects, such as vacancy-related complexes. Post-growth hydrogenation was shown to be less effective, when compared to thermal annealing, in removing the non-radiative defects.

I.A.Buyanova, W.M.Chen, G.Pozina, B.Monemar, W.X.Ni, G.V.Hansson: Applied Physics Letters, 1997, 71[25], 3676-8