Temperature Dependence of Spin Relaxation Time in InAs Columnar Quantum Dots at 10 to 150K

We have investigated carrier spin relaxation in InAs columnar quantum dots (CQDs) using time-resolved photoluminescence measurement. The CQDs were formed by depositing a 1.8 monolayer InAs seed dot layer and a short-period GaAs/InAs superlattice (SL). The spin relaxations of the 3- and 35-period SL CQDs show double exponential decay up to 50 and 130 K, respectively. The spin relaxation times of the fast component, whose amplitudes are 4-11 times larger than that of the slow component, are around 100 ps for the two samples. For the 3-period SL CQDs, the fast spin relaxation time shows no temperature dependence up to around 50 K, indicating the relevance of the Bir-Aronov-Pikus process. The slow spin relaxation time of the 35-period SL CQDs was found to decrease from 3.42 ns at 10 K to 0.849 ns at 130 K. This large change may be explained by the Elliott-Yafet process considering acoustic phonon scattering. (C) 2012 The Japan Society of Applied Physics