Evidence for "dark charge" from photoluminescence measurements in wide InGaN quantum wells.

Wide (15-25 nm) InGaN/GaN quantum wells in LED structures were studied by time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy and compared with narrow (2.6 nm) wells in similar LED structures. Using below-barrier pulsed excitation in the microsecond range, we measured increase and decay of PL pulses. These pulses in wide wells at low-intensity excitation show very slow increase and fast decay. Moreover, the shape of the pulses changes when we vary the separation between them. None of these effects occurs for samples with narrow wells. The unusual properties of wide wells are attributed to the presence of "dark charge" i.e., electrons and holes in the ground states. Their wave functions are spatially separated and due to negligible overlap they do not contribute to emission. However, they screen the built-in field in the well very effectively so that excited states appear with significant overlap and give rise to PL. A simple model of recombination kinetics including "dark charge" explains the observations qualitatively.

Ascending Si diffusion into growing GaN nanowires from the SiC/Si substrate: up to the solubility limit and beyond.

We report a novel mechanism that allows the incorporation of Si into GaN nanowires up to and beyond the solubility limit. This mechanism is documented during the growth on vicinal (misoriented) SiC/Si hybrid substrates having the step bunches. Nanowires that are grown at these locations become heavily Si doped. Such high Si concentrations were verified by secondary-ion mass spectrometry. Photoluminescence data also point to very high carrier concentrations. Moreover, Raman spectroscopy together with quantum chemical modelling shows the build up of Si into Ga sites and indicates even the possibility of the formation of a Ga(Si)N solid solution. The microscopic mechanism responsible for heavy doping and even alloying is diffusion driven by the mechano-chemical effect, which allows for the extremely efficient injection of Si atoms into the nanowires from the step bunches at the vicinal SiC/Si substrates.

Role of hole confinement in the recombination properties of InGaN quantum structures.

We study the isolated contribution of hole localization for well-known charge carrier recombination properties observed in conventional, polar InGaN quantum wells (QWs). This involves the interplay of charge carrier localization and non-radiative transitions, a non-exponential decay of the emission and a specific temperature dependence of the emission, denoted as "s-shape". We investigate two dimensional In0.25Ga0.75N QWs of single monolayer (ML) thickness, stacked in a superlattice with GaN barriers of 6, 12, 25 and 50 MLs. Our results are based on scanning and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (STEM and HR-TEM), continuous-wave (CW) and time-resolved photoluminescence (TRPL) measurements as well as density functional theory (DFT) calculations. We show that the recombination processes in our structures are not affected by polarization fields and electron localization. Nevertheless, we observe all the aforementioned recombination properties typically found in standard polar InGaN quantum wells. Via decreasing the GaN barrier width to 6 MLs and below, the localization of holes in our QWs is strongly reduced. This enhances the influence of non-radiative recombination, resulting in a decreased lifetime of the emission, a weaker spectral dependence of the decay time and a reduced s-shape of the emission peak. These findings suggest that single exponential decay observed in non-polar QWs might be related to an increasing influence of non-radiative transitions.