All optical method for investigation of spin and charge transport in semiconductors: Combination of spatially and time-resolved luminescence

A new approach is demonstrated for investigating charge and spin diffusion as well as surface and bulk recombination in unpassivated doped semiconductors. This approach consists in using two complementary, conceptually related, techniques, which are time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) and spatially resolved microluminescence (μPL) and is applied here to p+ GaAs. Analysis of the sole TRPL signal is limited by the finite risetime. On the other hand, it is shown that joint TRPL and μPL can be used to determine the diffusion constant, the bulk recombination time, and the spin relaxation time. As an illustration, the temperature variation of these quantities is investigated for p+ GaAs.