Role of the InAs monomolecular plane inserted in bulk GaAs

The effect of an InAs monomolecular plane interspersed in bulk GaAs is investigated. To this aim, we present ab initio self-consistent pseudopotential calculations of the electronic structures of InAsGaAs (001) strained layer superlattices. Both electrons and holes are found to be strongly localized in the vicinity of the inserted InAs monolayer. The latter is thus playing the role of a single quantum well, which successfully explains the observed intense and narrow low temperature (2 K) photoluminescence spectra.