Excitons in InP/InAs inhomogeneous quantum dots

Wannier excitons confined in an InP/InAs inhomogeneous quantum dot (IQD) have been studied theoretically in the framework of the effective mass approximation. A finite-depth potential well has been used to describe the effect of the quantum confinement in the InAs layer. The exciton binding energy has been determined using the Ritz variational method. The spatial correlation between the electron and the hole has been taken into account in the expression for the wavefunction. It has been shown that for a fixed size b of the IQD, the exciton binding energy depends strongly on the core radius a. Moreover, it became apparent that there are two critical values of the core radius, a(crit) and a(2D), for which important changes of the exciton binding occur. The former critical value, a(crit), corresponds to a minimum of the,,exciton binding energy and may be used to distinguish between tridimensional confinement and bidimensional confinement. The latter critical value, a(2D), corresponds to a maximum of the exciton binding energy and to the most pronounced bidimensional character of the exciton.