234 nm and 246 nm AlN-Delta-GaN quantum well deep ultraviolet light-emitting diodes

Abstract

Deep ultraviolet (DUV) AlN-delta-GaN quantum well (QW) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with emission wavelengths of 234 nm and 246 nm are proposed and demonstrated in this work. Our results reveal that the use of AlN-delta-GaN QW with ∼1–3 monolayer GaN delta-layer can achieve a large transverse electric (TE)-polarized spontaneous emission rate instead of transverse magnetic-polarized emission, contrary to what is observed in conventional AlGaN QW in the 230–250 nm wavelength regime. The switching of light polarization in the proposed AlN-delta-GaN QW active region is attributed to the rearrangement of the valence subbands near the Γ-point. The light radiation patterns obtained from angle-dependent electroluminescence measurements for the Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE)-grown 234 nm and 246 nm AlN-delta-GaN QW LEDs show that the photons are mainly emitted towards the surface rather than the edge, consistent with the simulated patterns achieved by the finite-difference time-domain modeling. The results demonstrate that the proposed AlN-delta-GaN QWs would potentially lead to high-efficiency TE-polarized surface-emitting DUV LEDs.