Common occurrence of distortion in semiconductor luminescence spectra

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Abstract
The distortion of semiconductor luminescence spectra by selective absorption of totally internally reflected rays in the specimen is investigated by varying the effective field of view of the collection optics and by local excitation from a focused electron beam. For example, in undoped InP, the results show that an artifactual enhancement of the acceptor related luminescence by a factor of ∼50 occurs if the field of view commonly used in luminescence experiments (∼1 mm) is employed. In addition, a shoulder on a spectral peak close to the absorption edge, which could be interpreted as being due to a separate recombination mechanism, is shown to be merely an artifact arising from this distortion. This communication shows for the first time that the effect can be both detected and eliminated by a novel field-of-view masking technique.