AlGaAs structures with different aluminum concentration (xϭ0.0, 0.17, 0.30, and 0.40͒ were characterized by photoluminescence and photoreflectance techniques. The temperature dependence of optical transitions in the temperature ranging from 2 to 300 K were investigated.

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The mechanism for low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) emissions in GaAsSb/AlGaAs and GaAsSbN/GaAs strained-layer single quantum wells (SQWs), grown by molecular-beam epitaxy, is studied in detail, using PL spectroscopy as a function of temperature and excitation intensity. In all samples, the PL peak energy as well as the full width at half maximum (FWHM), as a function of temperature, present anomalous behaviors, i.e., the PL peak energy shows a successive red/blue/redshift (S-shaped behavior) and the FWHM shows a successive blue/red/blueshift ("inverted S-shaped curve") with increasing temperature. At sufficiently low excitation intensity and in a narrow temperature interval (50-80 K), the nitrogen-containing samples present two clear competitive PL peaks. The low-energy PL mechanism (8-80 K) is dominated by localized PL transitions, while the high-energy PL mechanism is dominated by the ground state (e1-hh1) PL transition. Additionally, these PL peaks show different temperature dependence with the low-energy PL peak, showing a stronger redshift than the high-energy PL peak. A competition process between localized and delocalized excitons is used to discuss these PL properties.

GaAsSbN/GaAs strained-layer single quantum wells grown on a GaAs substrate by molecular-beam epitaxy with different N concentrations were studied using the photoluminescence ͑PL͒ technique in the temperature range from 9 to 296 K. A strong redshift in optical transition energies induced by a small increase in N concentration has been observed in the PL spectra. This effect can be explained by the interaction between a narrow resonant band formed by the N-localized states and the conduction band of the host semiconductor. Excitonic transitions in the quantum wells show a successive red/blue/redshift with increasing temperature in the 2-100 K range. The activation energies of nonradiative channels responsible for a strong thermal quenching are deduced from an Arrhenius plot of the integrated PL intensity.

We studied the effect of Mn concentration on the optical, morphological and magnetic properties of Zn1-xMnxTe NCs grown in a glass matrix produced by the fusion method. The physical properties of these materials were determined by optical absorption (OA), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic/magnetic force microscopy (AFM/MFM) and photoluminescence (PL). An analysis of the OA spectra, based on the crystal field theory (CFT), showed strong evidence that Mn(2+) ions were substitutionally incorporated into the Zn1-xMnxTe NCs until reaching the solubility limit (concentration, x = 0.100). Above this nominal concentration, TEM showed the onset of Mn-related phases, such as MnO and α-MnO2, in the PZABP glass system. AFM images showed that NC density on the surface of the glass matrix decreased as x-content increased. It is probable that MnO and MnO2 NCs would outnumber Zn1-xMnxTe NCs at higher concentrations - a conclusion that was corroborated by the OA spectra and TEM images. MFM images revealed that samples with Mn(2+) ions responded to magnetization from an MFM probe. This implied that Mn(2+) ions were incorporated within the Zn1-xMnxTe NCs and gave rise to the diluted magnetic semiconductor (DMS) structure. The PL spectra not only confirmed the evidence obtained by OA, CFT, TEM and AFM/MFM, but also showed that Mn(2+) concentration could be used to tune (4)T1((4)G) → (6)A1((6)S) emission energy.