Morphological instability of GaInNAs quantum wells on AlGaAs/GaAs distributed Bragg reflectors grown by metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy

We report on the optical and structural integrity of metal-organic vapor-phase epitaxy grown GaInNAs/GaAs single quantum wells on AlGaAs/GaAs distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs). Surface morphology as measured by atomic force microscopy and quantum well photoluminescence spectra were investigated for different numbers of DBR periods and different DBR-growth temperatures. Increased number of DBR periods severely degrades the surface morphology and photoluminescence. However, a significant improvement was obtained by lowering the growth temperature of the DBRs from 745 to 680/spl deg/C.