Lateral-Polarity Structure of AlGaN Quantum Wells: A Promising Approach to Enhancing the Ultraviolet Luminescence
Type
ArticleAuthors
Guo, WeiSun, Haiding
Torre, Bruno
Li, Junmei
Sheikhi, Moheb
Jiang, Jiean
Li, Hongwei
Guo, Shiping
Li, Kuang-Hui
Lin, Ronghui

Giugni, Andrea
Di Fabrizio, Enzo M.

Li, Xiaohang

Ye, Jichun
KAUST Department
Advanced Semiconductor LaboratoryComputer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division
Electrical Engineering Program
Material Science and Engineering Program
Physical Science and Engineering (PSE) Division
Structural Molecular Imaging Light Enhanced Spectroscopies Lab; King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST); Thuwal 23955-6900 Saudi Arabia
KAUST Grant Number
BAS/1/1664-01-01OCRF-2014-CRG3-6214038
ZJUAMIS1704
Date
2018-06-08Online Publication Date
2018-06-08Print Publication Date
2018-08Permanent link to this record
http://hdl.handle.net/10754/630493
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
Aluminum-gallium-nitride alloys (Al x Ga1– x N, 0 ≤ x ≤ 1) can emit light covering the ultraviolet spectrum from 210 to 360 nm. However, these emitters have not fulfilled their full promise to replace the toxic and fragile mercury UV lamps due to their low efficiencies. This study demonstrates a promising approach to enhancing the luminescence efficiency of AlGaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs) via the introduction of a lateral-polarity structure (LPS) comprising both III and N-polar domains. The enhanced luminescence in LPS is attributed to the surface roughening, and compositional inhomogeneities in the N-polar domain. The space-resolved internal quantum efficiency (IQE) mapping shows a higher relative IQE in N-polar domains and near inversion domain boundaries, providing strong evidence of enhanced radiative recombination efficiency in the LPS. These experimental observations are in good agreement with the theoretical calculations, where both lateral and vertical band diagrams are investigated. This work suggests that the introduction of the LPS in AlGaN-based MQWs can provide unprecedented tunability in achieving higher luminescence performance in the development of solid state light sources.Citation
Guo W, Sun H, Torre B, Li J, Sheikhi M, et al. (2018) Lateral-Polarity Structure of AlGaN Quantum Wells: A Promising Approach to Enhancing the Ultraviolet Luminescence. Advanced Functional Materials 28: 1802395. Available: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/adfm.201802395.Sponsors
W.G. and H.S. contributed equally to this work. The NIMTE authors acknowledge the support of the National Key Research and Development Program of China (Grant No. 2016YFB0400802), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61704176), and the Open project of Zhejiang Key Laboratory for Advanced Microelectronic Intelligent Systems and Applications (Grant No. ZJUAMIS1704). The KAUST authors acknowledge the support of the KAUST Baseline BAS/1/1664-01-01, OCRF-2014-CRG3-6214038, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 61774065). The authors greatly appreciate the help from Prof. Zi-hui Zhang and co-workers of Hebei University of Technology in theoretical band diagram calculations and fruitful discussions on device physics.Publisher
WileyJournal
Advanced Functional MaterialsAdditional Links
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/adfm.201802395ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1002/adfm.201802395