Relative stability of excitonic complexes in quasi-one-dimensional semiconductors

A configuration space approach is developed to uncover generic stability peculiarities for the lowest energy neutral and charged exciton complexes (biexciton and trion) in quasi-one-dimensional semiconductors. Trions are shown to be more stable than biexcitons in strongly confined structures with small reduced electron-hole masses. Biexcitons are more stable in less confined structures with large reduced electron-hole masses. In semiconducting carbon nanotubes, in particular, the trion binding energy is shown to be greater than that of the biexciton by a factor of similar to 1.4, decreasing with diameter, thus revealing the general physical principles that underlie recent experimental observations.