Biaxial stress ring applications to magneto-optical studies of semiconductor films

We present a magneto-optical system to study semiconductor heterostructures in the presence of an external biaxial tensile strain. The pressure cell is based on the deflection of a plate (the sample) placed between a sphere and a ring. This externally applied stress is easily controlled and can achieve a deformation of up to similar to0.25% for GaAs films. This device is very useful for band structure study and optical resonance experiments in heterostructures. We also present the application of the device to study the behavior of the magneto-excitons in InP epitaxial layer as a function of the biaxial strain. We observed that the diamagnetic and Zeeman effects in InP films are affected by the biaxial tensile strain. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.