Characterization of III-V dilute nitride based multi-quantum well p-i-n diodes for next generation opto-electrical conversion devices

Abstract

This work investigates the temperature dependent photoluminescence (PL) and current-voltage (I-V) characterization of a GaInNAs/GaAs p-i-n diode with multiple quantum wells (MQWs). Two different diode samples based on 10- and 20-undoped quantum wells (QWs) were considered for this work. The QWs of Ga0.952In0.048N0.016As0.984 p-i-n diode were 10 nm thick and separated by 10 nm GaAs barriers. They were grown above GaAs substrates using a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) system. The temperature dependence of PL measurement showed good agreement with the effective bandgap of GaAs and GaInNAs QWs materials. The 10 QWs and 20 QWs samples show PL peaks at λ = 1076 nm and λ = 1086 nm with 300 K temperature, respectively, compared to calculated value of λ = 1087 nm using band-anti crossing (BAC) model. Furthermore, peak PL energy (eV) as a function of temperature, T (K) indicated blue and red shifts as the temperature dropped from 300 K to 100 K and 100 K to 50 K, respectively. With further decrease in temperature below 50 K, pronounced S-shaped pattern is exhibited as reported for dilute nitride material systems. Meanwhile, I-V characteristics of the p-i-n diodes show that the dark current density at -6.0 V reversed bias is relatively low with 472.8 nA/cm2 and -22.6 nA/cm2 for 10 and 20 QWs devices, respectively. Under illumination at peak wavelength, the 20 QWs produce twice to that of 10 QWs in current density. Thus, a GaInNAs MQWs diode is suitable for photodetector operating near 1.0 µm wavelength and solar cells with high efficiency photovoltaics