We investigated the effects of high potential barriers on the optical characteristics of InAs quantum dots (QDs) by using photoluminescence (PL) and photoreflectance (PR) spectroscopy. A sample with regular InAs quantum dots on GaAs was grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as a reference. Another InAs QDs sample was embedded in single AlGaAs barriers. On the other hand, a sample with GaAs/AlGaAs superlattice barriers was adopted for comparison with a sample with a single AlGaAs layer. In results, we found that the emission wavelength of QDs was effectively tailored by using high potential barriers. Also, it was found that the optical properties of a sample with QDs embedded in GaAs/AlGaAs superlattices were better than those of a sample with QDs embedded in a single layer of AlGaAs barriers. We believe that GaAs/AlGaAs superlattice could effectively prevent the generation of defects.