Carrier localization and related photoluminescence in cubic AlGaN epilayers

Powell, R. E. L. and Novikov, S. V. and Luckert, F. and Edwards, P. R. and Akimov, A. V. and Foxon, C. T. and Martin, R. W. and Kent, A. J. (2011) Carrier localization and related photoluminescence in cubic AlGaN epilayers. Journal of Applied Physics, 110 (6). 063517. ISSN 0021-8979 (https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3632988)

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Abstract

The steady state and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL) spectra of cubic AlxGa1-xN have been measured for 0 < x < 1. The intensity of the room temperature PL increases by an order of magnitude when the AlN content increases from x = 0 to x = 0.95. Additionally, the PL decay slows down with the decrease of temperature and increase of x. These results show that strong localization of carriers on alloy composition fluctuations plays a large role in determining the intensity and temporal evolution of the PL. The activation energy for the localized carriers increases with the increase of x and reaches the value of 55 meV at x = 0.95.