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Radiative and nonradiative recombination mechanisms in nonpolar and semipolar GaInN/GaN quantum wells
Author(s) -
Langer Torsten,
Klisch Manuela,
Alexej Ketzer Fedor,
Jönen Holger,
Bremers Heiko,
Rossow Uwe,
Meisch Tobias,
Scholz Ferdinand,
Hangleiter Andreas
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
physica status solidi (b)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1521-3951
pISSN - 0370-1972
DOI - 10.1002/pssb.201552353
Subject(s) - quantum well , photoluminescence , radiative transfer , exciton , spontaneous emission , indium , binding energy , materials science , atomic physics , range (aeronautics) , recombination , non radiative recombination , quantum efficiency , molecular physics , condensed matter physics , chemistry , physics , semiconductor , optoelectronics , optics , semiconductor materials , laser , biochemistry , composite material , gene
Via temperature‐dependent time‐resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy, we investigate the radiative and nonradiative recombination processes in thin (quantum well widths of about 1.5 nm) a ‐plane, m ‐plane, ( 11 2 ‾ 2 ) and ( 20 2 ‾ 1 ) GaInN/GaN fivefold quantum well structures of varying indium content grown on low defect density GaN substrates and GaN templates. At room temperature, we observe surprisingly short radiative lifetimes in the range from 100 ps to 1 ns for these structures, being about one to two orders of magnitude shorter than for similar c ‐plane quantum wells. This large difference cannot solely be explained by the larger overlap matrix element in non‐ and semipolar wells. Higher exciton binding energies and lower effective density of states masses may contribute to an enhanced radiative probability. The nonradiative recombination exhibits a thermally activated behavior with activation energies of about 10 meV for ( 11 2 ‾ 2 ) and around 25 meV for nonpolar quantum wells. These values are lower than the quantum well barrier height and the exciton binding energy, but in a similar range as the localization energies estimated from the radiative recombination.