Photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy is a powerful technique for probing the structures of many types of III-V semiconductor materials. When a semiconductor material is excited at a particular wavelength, electron-hole pairs are generated. The most intense radiative transition is between the conduction band and valence band, and this measurement is used to determine the material band gap. Radiative and non-radiative transitions in semiconductors also involve localized defect levels. The photoluminescence energy associated with these levels can be used to identify specific defects, and the amount of photoluminescence can be used to determine their concentration, and thus predict device quality. At ambient temperatures, the PL signal is typically broad, as much as 100 nm in width. When cooled, structural details may be resolved, and a small spectral shift between 2 samples may represent a change in a structural parameter. Thus a system with high spectral resolution is required.

In this paper, a modular Low Temperature Photoluminescence system (LTPL) for measuring optical band gap as a function of temperature is described. Results show that the optical band gap shifts towards higher energy as the sample temperature decreases.