Dependence of the activation energies on the well width in CdTe/ZnTe strained single quantum wells

Photoluminescence (PL) measurements on the CdTe/ZnTe strained single quantum wells grown by using the molecular beam epitaxy technique showed that the sharp excitonic peaks corresponding to the transition from the first electronic subband to the first heavy-hole (E1–HH1) were shifted to lower energy with increasing well width. The (E1–HH1) interband transitions were calculated by using an envelope function approximation taking into account the strain effects, and the values were in reasonable agreement with those obtained from the (E1–HH1) excitonic transitions of the PL spectra. The activation energies of the confined electrons in the CdTe quantum well were obtained from the temperature-dependent PL spectra, and their values increased with increasing CdTe well width due to the quantum confinement effect. The present results can help to improve the understanding of the activation energies dependent on the CdTe well width in CdTe/ZnTe single quantum wells.