Optical, structural, and numerical investigations of GaAs/AlGaAs core-multishell nanowire quantum well tubes.

The electronic properties of thin, nanometer scale GaAs quantum well tubes embedded inside the AlGaAs shell of a GaAs core-multishell nanowire are investigated using optical spectroscopies. Using numerical simulations to model cylindrically and hexagonally symmetric systems, we correlate these electronic properties with structural characterization by aberration-corrected scanning transmission electron microscopy of nanowire cross sections. These tubular quantum wells exhibit extremely high quantum efficiency and intense emission for extremely low submicrowatt excitation powers in both photoluminescence and photoluminescence excitation measurements.