Growth and Luminescence Properties of III-N:Er Materials Doped During Chemical Beam Epitaxy

Abstract

AbstractThe incorporation and optical activation of Er in III-N optically-pumped and electroluminescent structures has been studied. For the first time, strong Er3+-related photoluminescence (PL) was measured at 300K for GaN:Er doped during growth on c-plane Al2O3 and Si. Also, room temperature electroluminescence was observed for simple GaN:Er structures on Si. Experiments to evaluate the effects C and 0 on the optical activity of Er indicated that these impurities enhance Er PL and EL in GaN. GaN films doped with Er to a concentration of 3 ×1018 cm−3 with [0] ∼ 1020 cm−3 and [C] ∼1021 cm−3 luminesce at 1.54 pim with an intensity ∼2 orders of magnitude greater than films with oxygen and carbon backgrounds of less than 1019 cm−3. Implantation and activation annealing was also shown to increase Er3+ signal in p(Mg)-i(Er)-n(Si) structures where C and 0 implant profiles were made to coincide with the Er-doped layers. The thermal PL quenching behavior was also markedly different for samples of varying 0 and C content. Er3+ photoluminescence from Gan:Er/Al2O3 samples with high O and C concentrations quenched by only 10% between 15 K and 300 K while the integrated PL signal from samples with lower [O] and [C] quenched ∼85% over the same temperature range.