We report on the successful nano-fabrication and characterization of III-nitride blue and ultraviolet (UV) photonic crystal light emitting diodes (PC-LEDs) using electron beam lithography and inductively coupled plasma dry etching. Triangular arrays of holes with different diameters/periodicities were etched on the LEDs. Optical measurements on the photonic crystals (PCs) performed using near-field scanning optical microscopy (NSOM) showed a 60° periodic variation with the angle between the propagation direction of emission light and the PCs lattice. Under optical pumping, an unprecedented enhancement factor of 20 in emission light intensity of wavelength 475 nm was achieved at room temperature with emission light parallel to the Γ-K direction of the PCs lattice. Guided by the optical pumping results, new design geometry of LEDs with PCs has been employed to optimize the light extraction. Enhancement in optical power of current injected blue and UV PC-LEDs over conventional LEDs is discussed. It was observed that the optical enhancement factor depends strongly on the PC lattice constant and hole size. The achievement of nitride photonic crystal emitters with enhanced light extraction efficiency is expected to benefit many new applications of III-nitrides including solid-state lighting for general illumination and photonic integrated circuits operating in the visible and UV spectral regions.
Si-doped n-type AlxGa1MINxN alloys with x up to 0.5 and Mg-doped p-type AlxGa1-xN alloys with x up to 0.27 were grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on sapphire substrates. For the n-type AlxGa1-xN, we achieved highly conductive alloys for x up to 0.5. An electron concentration as high as 1x1018cm-3 was obtained in Si-doped Al0.5Ga0.5N alloys with an electron mobility of 16 cm$_2)Vs at room temperature, as confirmed by Hall-effect measurements. Our results also revealed that the conductivity of AlxGa1-xN alloys continuously increases with an increase of Si doping level for a fixed value of Al content (X<0.5), the conductivities of AlxGa1-xN alloys decrease with increasing Al content for a given doping level; the critical Si-doping concentration needed to convert insulating AlxGa$1-x)N with high Al contents (X>=0.4) to n- type conductivity is about 1 x 1018cm-3. Time- resolved photoluminescence studies carried out on these materials have shown that Si-doping reduces the effect of carrier localization in AlxGa1-xN alloys and a sharp drop in carrier localization energy occurs when the Si doping concentration increases above 1x1018cm-3, which directly correlates with the observed electrical properties. For the Mg-doped AlxGa1-xN alloys, p-type conduction was achieved for x up to 0.27, as confirmed by variable temperature Hall measurements. Emission lines of band-to-impurity transitions of free electrons with neutral Mg acceptors as well as localized excitons have been observed in the p-type AlxGa1-xN alloys. The Mg acceptor activation energies EA were deduces from photoluminescence spectra and were found to increase with Al content and agreed very well with those obtained by Hall measurements. From the measured activation energy as a function of Al content, EA versus x, the resistivity of Mg-doped AlxGa1-x with high Al contents can be deduced. Our results have also shown that PL measurements provide direct means of obtaining EA especially where this cannot be obtained accurately by electrical methods due to high resistance of p-type AlxGa1-xN with high Al content.
The propagation properties of light in AlGaN/GaN multiple- quantum-well (MQW) waveguides have been studied by time- resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The waveguides were patterned with fixed width of 0.5micrometers but orientations varying from -30 degree(s) to 60 degree(s) relative to the a-axis of GaN by electron-beam lithography and inductively-coupled plasma (ICP) dry etching. The peak position and line-width of the emission peak were found to vary systematically with orientations of the waveguides and followed the six-fold symmetry of the wurtzite structure. This is explained in terms of anisotropy of the exciton/carrier diffusion coefficient along the different crystal orientations of the semiconductor materials. We also observed a remarkable decrease in the PL intensity as well as increase in time delay of the temporal response as the location of the laser excitation spot on the waveguide is varied. These observations can be understood in terms of exciton- polarization propagation in the waveguides. The speed of generated polaritons with energy corresponding to the well transitions in the waveguides was determined from the time delay of the temporal response to be approximately (1.26+/- 0.16 x 107 m/sec. The optical loss in the waveguides was determined to be about 5-8 cm-1 for different excitation intensities. The implications of these results to waveguiding in optical devices based on the III- nitride semiconductors are discussed.
InxAlyGa1-xN quaternary alloys with different In and Al composites were grown on sapphire substrates with GaN buffer by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. Optical properties of these quaternary alloys were studied by picosecond time-resolved photoluminescence. Our studies have revealed that InxAlyGa1-xN quaternary alloys with lattice matched with GaN (y approximately 4.7x) have the highest optical quality. More importantly, we can achieve not only higher emission energies but also higher emission intensities (or quantum efficiencies) in InxAlyGa1-x-yN quaternary alloys than that of GaN.
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