A study was made of the electronic properties of InxGa1-xAs/GaAs quantum wells, when grown onto vicinal substrates, based upon photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation experiments in a high magnetic field. The samples had a wide range of In contents, various misorientation angles (up to 6°) and well widths. It was found that larger miscut angles produce higher quality samples i.e. the Stokes shifts were smaller and the photoluminescence peaks display lower inhomogeneous broadening. As to the luminescence and free electron-hole absorption energies, the results show an increase with miscut angle. Yet this increase was not monotonic. The observed behaviour was attributed to the terrace length commensurability with the (2 x 4) unit cell of the (001) GaAs reconstructed surface. Binding energy and heavy hole exciton reduced in-plane mass were hardly terrace length dependent. The results obtained were well explained by numerical calculations that take into account the strain inhomogeneity and the In segregation associated with this type of quantum wells.

Terrace Length Commensurability and Surface Reconstruction in Highly Strained InGaAs/GaAs Quantum Wells Grown on Vicinal Substrates. C.López, R.Mayoral, F.Meseguer, J.A.Porto, J.Sánchez-Dehesa, N.Grandjean, C.Deparis, J.Massies: Superlattices and Microstructures, 1994, 15[2], 155