Group-III Nitride Quantum Heterostructures Emitting in the whole Visible Range

Abstract

ABSTRACTGroup-III nitride quantum wells (QWs) and quantum dots (QDs) have been grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Their optical properties are shown to be governed by the presence of a huge internal polarization field. For example, GaN/AlN QDs emit from the blue to the orange due to the giant quantum confined Stark effect (QCSE) induced by a built- in electric field of 4 MV/cm. Another consequence of the QCSE is to drastically reduces the oscillator strength of the ground state transition and thereby to increase by several orders of magnitude its radiative lifetime. Despite the very large density of dislocations in nitride layers, which induce non-radiative recombinations, carrier localization enhances the photoluminescence (PL) efficiency. This is demonstrated by GaN/AlN QDs grown on silicon substrates exhibiting strong PL intensity at room temperature. InGaN/GaN QWs with In composition of 20% also display 300 K PL peaking through the whole visible spectrum (0.4-0.66 νm). This is achieved by varying the QW thickness from 1.5 to 5.5 nm, the red-shift resulting from an internal electric field of 2.5 MV/cm. For InGaN/GaN QWs emitting at 2.8-2.9 eV, the PL efficiency at 300 K is larger than 10 %. This is ascribed to carrier localization, which is not due to InGaN phase separation that would form QDs, as revealed by transmission electron microscopy. Another origin of the carrier localization in InGaN/GaN QWs is then discussed.