Room-temperature defect tolerance of band-engineered InAs quantum dot heterostructures

Using photoluminescence (PL) at 77-420 K and high-energy proton implantation (1.5 MeV, dose up to 3x10(14) cm(-2)) we have studied the thermal quenching of PL and defect tolerance of self-assembled shape-engineered InAs quantum dots (QDs) embedded into GaAs quantum wells (QWs). At room temperature, QDs appeared to withstand two orders of magnitude higher proton doses than QWs without PL degradation. A simple dynamic model was used to account for both dose and temperature dependence of PL efficiency. At low temperatures, the defect-related quenching is mainly controlled by a reduction in the density of defect-free QDs. At and above room temperature, both thermal and defect-related quenching of PL are due to the escape of carriers from dots to wells that act as barriers with low damage constants. A relatively large barrier for escape (450 meV) as well as low nonradiative recombination rate in QDs is shown to account for unsurpassed room-temperature defect tolerance and high PL efficiency at room and elevated temperatures.