Measurements of the excitation power-dependence and temperature-dependence photoluminescence(PL) are performed to investigate the emission mechanisms of In Ga N/Ga N quantum wells(QWs) in laser diode structures. The PL spectral peak is blueshifted with increasing temperature over a certain temperature range. It is found that the blueshift range was larger when the PL excitation power is smaller. This particular behavior indicates that carriers are thermally activated from localized states and partially screen the piezoelectric field present in the QWs. The small blueshift range corresponds to a weak quantum-confined Stark effect(QCSE) and a relatively high internal quantum efficiency(IQE) of the QWs.
We investigate the mechanism for the improvement of p-type doping efficiency in Mg-Al0.14Ga0.86N/GaN superlattices(SLs).It is shown that the hole concentration of SLs increases by nearly an order of magnitude,from 1.1×1017 to 9.3×1017cm-3,when an AlN interlayer is inserted to modulate the strains.Schro¨dinger-Poisson self-consistent calculations suggest that such an increase could be attributed to the reduction of donor-like defects caused by the strain modulation induced by the AlN interlayer.Additionally,the donor-acceptor pair emission exhibits a remarkable decrease in intensity of the cathodoluminescence spectrum for SLs with an AlN interlayer.This supports the theoretical calculations and indicates that the strain modulation of SLs could be beneficial to the donor-like defect suppression as well as the p-type doping efficiency improvement.
The InGaN/GaN blue light emitting diode(LED) is numerically investigated using a triangular-shaped quantum well model,which involves analysis on its energy band,carrier concentration,overlap of electron and hole wave functions,radiative recombination rate,and internal quantum efficiency.The simulation results reveal that the InGaN/GaN blue light emitting diode with triangular quantum wells exhibits a higher radiative recombination rate than the conventional light emitting diode with rectangular quantum wells due to the enhanced overlap of electron and hole wave functions(above 90%) under the polarization field.Consequently,the efficiency droop is only 18% in the light emitting diode with triangular-shaped quantum wells,which is three times lower than that in a conventional LED.
We theoretically investigate the optical properties of an ultra-thin InN layer embedded in InGaN matrix for light emitters. The peak emission wavelength extends from ultraviolet (374 nm) to green (536 nm) with InN quantum well thickness increasing from 1 monolayer to 2 monolayers, while the overlap of electron-hole wave function remains at a high level (larger than 90%). Increase of In content in InGaN matrix provides a better approach to longer wavelength emission, which only reduces the spontaneous emission rate slightly compared with the case of increasing In content of the conventional InGaN quantum well. Also, the transparency carrier density derived from gain spectrum is of the same order as that in the conventional blue laser diode. Our study provides skillful design on the development of novel structure InN-based light emitting diodes as well as laser diodes.
