Photoluminescence Decay Dynamics in Blue and Green InGaN LED Structures Revealed by the Frequency-Domain Technique

Abstract

An extended study of charge-carrier localization and delocalization in blue and green InGaN light-emitting diode (LED) test structures has been performed. Using the frequency-domain lifetime measurement (FDLM) technique based on direct harmonic modulation of photoluminescence excitation in the frequency range from 1 Hz to 100 MHz, carrier lifetimes were estimated at scales spanning from milliseconds to nanoseconds. The time resolution was determined using fast Fourier transform analysis. A system comprising a radiative and several nonradiative recombination channels was used to describe the complex photoluminescence decay. Due to the broad timescale, even stretched exponential decays from 2 ns to 4 ns up to 1.5 μs (stretching parameter 0.5 to 0.6) were revealed. A higher degree of carrier delocalization was observed for the blue compared with the green light-emitting structure, providing qualitative insight into disorder, which is tentatively assigned to spatial fluctuations of the indium concentration in the quantum wells. A nanosecond nonradiative recombination channel for the green light-emitting structure was found to be unsaturated throughout the entire photoexcitation power density range and was interpreted as being related to the higher defect density and lower internal quantum efficiency of the sample. To expand the study of lifetimes to much higher photoexcitation power density, time-resolved photoluminescence kinetics were measured.