Abstract

The conventional photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy can not measure the exciton binding energy directly since the exciton PL peak only gives the value of the bandgap energy minus the exciton binding energy, i. e. E_c − E_v −E_ex, where E_c (E_v) is the energy of the conduction (valence) band edge, and E_ex is the exciton binding energy. Recently we have observed a new phenomenon: the direction creation of excitons in a GaAs quantum well (QW) by hole assisted electron resonant tunneling. We will show that this new tunneling process as well as its reverse process can be a new technique to measure directly the exciton binding energy.

© 1996 Optical Society of America