Investigation of the light emission properties and carrier dynamics in dual-wavelength InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum well light emitting diodes

Abstract

Three dual-wavelength InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well (MQW) light emitting diodes (LEDs) with increasing indium content are grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, which contain six periods of low-In-content MQWs and two periods of high-In-content MQWs. For the low-In-content MQWs of three studied samples, their internal quantum efficiency (IQE) shows a rising trend as the emission wavelength increases from 406 nm to 430 nm due to the suppression of carriers escape from the wells to the barriers. However, for the high-In-content MQWs, the sample IQE falls rapidly with a further increase of emission wavelength from 496 nm to 575 nm. Theoretical calculation reveals that the electron-hole wave function overlap in the high-In-content MQWs is reduced because of an increase in the internal polarization field as indium content is increased. In addition, time-resolved photoluminescence decay curves show that the carriers generated in the low-In-content MQWs can be effectively transferred to the high-In-content part through the reabsorption process. However, the transfer time gradually becomes longer as emission wavelength increases, which means a reduction of carrier transfer rate between the different indium content MQWs. Furthermore, nonradiative recombination is enhanced in the high-In-content MQWs with longer emission wavelength due to the decline of crystal quality. Therefore, the fast drop of IQE for high-In-content MQWs can be attributed to the increase of the internal polarization field, the decrease of carrier transfer efficiency, and the enhanced nonradiative recombination. This research has a certain guiding value for an understanding of the recombination mechanism in the InGaN/GaN MQWs and for achieving high quality multiple-wavelength LEDs with better performance.