High brightness InGaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) require high quantum efficiency and its retention at high injection
levels. The efficiency drop at a high injection levels in InGaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) has been attributed, e.g. to
polarization field on polar c-plane InGaN and the heavy effective hole mass which impedes high hole densities and
transport in the active quantum wells. In this study, we carried out a comparative investigation of the internal quantum
efficiency (IQE) of InGaN active region in LED structures using resonant optical excitation for layers with polar (0001)
orientation on c-plane sapphire, and nonpolar (1-100) m-plane orientation, the latter on specially patterned Si and on m-plane bulk GaN. Analysis of the resonant photoluminescence (PL) intensity as a function of the excitation power
indicate that at comparable generated carrier concentrations the IQE of the m-plane InGaN on Si is approximately a
factor of 2 higher than that of the highly optimized c-plane layer. At the highest laser excitation level employed
(corresponding carrier concentration n ~ 1.2 x 1018 cm-3), the m-plane LED structure on Si has an IQE value of
approximately 65%. We believe that the m-plane would remain inherently advantageous, particularly at high electrical
injection levels, even with respect to highly optimized c-plane varieties. The observations could be attributed to the lack
of polarization induced field and the predicted increased optical matrix elements.
We report on GaN-based vertical cavities on highly reflective and crack-free 40.5 pair of AlGaN/GaN distributed Bragg
reflectors (DBRs) by using a selective growth method to avoid wafer cracking that is commonly observed in
conventional planar Al(Ga)N/GaN DBRs. An Al0.46Ga0.54N/GaN DBR with ~ 98% reflectivity was selectively grown
with square patterns of up to 150 × 150 μm2 in size, which were separated from each other by 10 μm wide SiO2 mask
stripes. Vertical cavity structures employing InGaN/InGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) were grown on these crackfree
patterned DBRs and capped with 13 pair SiO2/SiNx DBRs to complete the full cavity structure. A cavity mode at ~
442 nm in 150 × 150 μm2 area was observed, having a quality factor of ~300. The selective growth technique to
eliminate crack formation is very promising for the fabrication of nitride-based vertical-cavity surface emitting laser
devices.
We have investigated the efficiency droop in InGaN based multiple-quantum light-emitting diodes (MQWs-LEDs) and
double hetero-structure light-emitting diodes (DH-LEDs) by changing the barrier (both thickness and barrier height)
within quantum wells. Our results show that for MQW-LEDs, with the decrease of barrier width from 12nm In0.01Ga0.99N
to 3nm In0.01Ga0.99N, the external quantum efficiency (EQE) droop point is increased from 350 Acm-2 to >1000 Acm-2,
and the slope of EQE drop is also greatly reduced. When the barrier height of the MQW-LEDs is decreased, i.e. barriers
changed from In0.01Ga0.99N (3nm) to In0.06Ga0.94N (3nm), the EL intensity is reduced to half. In the case of DH-LEDs,
6nm DH-LED shows the highest EL intensity and no EQE droop up to 1000 Acm-2. When the active region of the DHLED
is increased from 6nm to 12nm, the electroluminescence (EL) intensity is reduced to 70% of that of the 6nm DHLED,
and the EQE shows negligible droop compared to the 6nm DH-LED due to both enhanced hole injection and
reduced electron overflow. These results suggest that heavy effective mass of holes and low hole injection efficiency
(due to relatively lower p-doping) leading to severe electron leakage are responsible for the efficiency droop.
We have studied the effects of thermal annealing in air on photoluminescence of bulk ZnO crystals grown by
hydrothermal technique and nominally undoped ZnO layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on sapphire. Annealing of
the samples in air at temperatures above 600°C resulted in a dramatic enhancement of the Cu-related green luminescence
(GL) band peaking at 2.45 eV and having characteristic fine structure. The GL band quenched at temperatures above 300
K due to escape of holes from the excited state of the CuZn acceptor to the valence band. SIMS profiles revealed
moderate increase of Al concentration and significant increase of Cu concentration in annealed samples. Exciton bound
to hydrogen-related donor (the 3.363 eV line) quenched after annealing the sample at temperatures above 750ºC.
The polarization fields in the c-axis-oriented hexagonal GaN system cause spatial separation of electrons and holes in
quantum wells, reducing the quantum efficiency, and resulting in a red shift of the emission as well as a blue shift with
increasing injected carrier density. In this paper, we report on the growth and optical characterization of InGaN/GaN
multiple quantum wells (MQWs) on nonpolar
(112¯0) a- and polar (0001) c-planes, as well as two semipolar planes,
(112¯2) and (11¯01) of GaN. There are two kinds of a-plane used in this study. One of the (112¯0) a-planes was
obtained on
(11¯00) m-plane sapphire substrates during the epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) of
(112¯2) oriented
semipolar GaN films, while the other one was planar a-plane GaN which was grown on
(11¯01) r-plane sapphire
substrates. The semipolar
(112¯2) and (11¯01) planes were obtained as sidewall facets during the ELO of c-plane GaN
with the mask stripes aligned along the GaN m-axis and a-axis, respectively. InGaN/GaN multiple quantum wells
(MQWs) with a nominal well thickness of 4 nm and a barrier thickness of 8 nm were grown on these five GaN
samples by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. Excitation power dependent photoluminescence (PL)
measurements were carried out on these quantum well structures to study the effect of polarization-induced electric
field on the band-edge emission. The quantum-well emission energy from the two a-plane MQWs showed zero shift,
compared to a 74 meV blue shift for the c-plane MQWs when the excitation power was increased from 1.3 mW to
37.0 mW. The semipolar
(112¯2) showed a blue shift of 35 meV with increased excitation power, suggesting reduced
polarization compared to that of c-plane. No quantum-well emission could be observed for the MQWs on
(11¯01)
semipolar planes. The shift in the quantum-well emission energy was attributed to the change of the screening effect of
photon-generated carriers in the quantum wells at different excitation powers.
For exact notation please see manuscript
Strong coupling between the exciton and cavity modes were demonstrated in a bulk ZnO-based hybrid microcavity The
hybrid microcavity consisted of a λ-thick bulk ZnO cavity layer sandwiched between a 29 pair Al0.5Ga0.5N/GaN bottom
distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) and an 8 pair SiO2/Si3N4 top DBR grown by molecular beam epitaxy, metalorganic
chemical vapor deposition, and ultra high vacuum plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition, respectively. All layer
interfaces were sharp and optical reflectivity measurements were performed to characterize the DBRs. The anti-crossing
behavior in the polarton dispersion, which indicates the system is in the strong coupling regime was observed in angle-resolved
photoluminescence measurements at room temperature, and a vacuum Rabi splitting of ~50 meV in the ZnO-based
hybrid microcavity was obtained.
The effect of plasma-induced ion damage on the optical properties of ZnO films grown by plasma-assisted molecular
beam epitaxy on a-sapphire substrates and GaN(0001)/c-sapphire templates prepared has been studied using steady-state
and time-resolved photoluminescence. We observed that the deflecting the ions produced by the RF oxygen plasma
away from substrate results in improved excitonic emission and modification of the defect-related PL spectrum. The
intensity of the near-band-edge lines in the photoluminescence spectra from the layers grown with the ion deflection was
found to increase by factors 7 to 20 for the layers grown on GaN(0001)/c-sapphire at a plasma power of 350 W and by 3
to 4 times for ZnO grown on a-sapphire substrates at a plasma power of 265 W as compared to the controls grown
without the ion deflection. The yellow-green spectral range was dominated by different defect bands in the films grown
with and without ion deflection. The effect of RF power on peak positions of the defect band was studied for the films
grown without ion deflection. For the ZnO films grown on a-plane sapphire substrates, time-resolved photoluminescence
showed a significant increase in luminescence decay times both at RT and 89 K. However, for ZnO on GaN(0001)/csapphire
substrates, virtually no improvement in decay time was found at 89 K with only a moderate increase in decay
constant at room temperature.
AlGaN/AlGaN distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) designed for the ultraviolet spectral region have been attained. The
crack-free structures were grown on c-plane sapphire by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). To minimize
the built-in strain in DBRs, a thin buffer layer was used directly on c-plane sapphire. A peak reflectivity of 95% at 381
nm with a 21 nm stop band width was obtained at room temperature (RT) using a 32.5 pairs Al0.7Ga0.3N/Al0.15Ga0.85N
DBR. With a driving force for DBRs and emitting regions in wide band gap semiconductor microcavities, such as those
based on GaN and ZnO, is the quest for cavity polariton which is the coupled mode between the exciton and photon
modes. Moreover, the exploitation of cavity polaritons could be expected in the course of the development of extremely
low-threshold optoelectronics devices.
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