Manipulation of emission energy in GaAs/AlGaAs core-shell nanowires with radial heterostructure

Abstract

Photoluminescence was studied in GaAs/AlGaAs nanowires (NWs) with different radial heterostructures. We demonstrated that manipulation of the emission energy may be achieved by appropriate choice of the shell structure. The emission at highest energy is generated in the NWs with tunneling thin AlGaAs inner shell and thin GaAs outer shell due to recombination of the photoexcited electrons confined in the outer shell with the holes in the core. Lower energy emission was shown to occur in the NWs with thick outer shell grown in the form of a short-period GaAs/AlGaAs multiple quantum well structure. In this case, the tunneling probability through the multiple quantum wells controls the energy emitted by the NWs. The doping of core results in dominated low energy emission from the GaAs core.