A photoluminescence study of plasma reactive ion etching-induced damage in GaN

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GaN films with reactive ion etching (RIE) induced damage were analyzed using photoluminescence (PL). We observed band-edge as well as donor-acceptor peaks with associated phonon replicas, all in agreement with previous studies. While both the control and damaged samples have their band-edge peak location change with temperature following the Varshni formula, its intensity however decreases with damage while the D—A peak increases considerably. Nitrogen post-etch plasma was shown to improve the band edge peak and decrease the D—A peak. This suggests that the N2 plasma has helped reduce the number of trapped carriers that were participating in the D—A transition and made the D°X transition more active, which reaffirms the N2 post-etch plasma treatment as a good technique to heal the GaN surface, most likely by filling the nitrogen vacancies previously created by etch damage.