Electric Field and Its Effect on Hot Carriers in InGaAs Valley Photovoltaic Devices

Power- and bias-dependent photoluminescence measurements are performed on devices with 25 and 100 nm InGaAs absorber layers to study the influence of the electric field on the maintenance and temperature of hot-carrier populations in valley photovoltaic III–V heterostructures. Photoluminescence and current density versus voltage measurements indicate that the electric field increases the hot-carrier temperature as a result of its role in accelerating low-energy carriers to the upper valleys. The net result of this behavior is a power-dependent hot phonon bottleneck at all fluences irrespective of absorbed power with a nonzero power-independent hot-carrier population.