Time Resolved Photoluminescence Spectroscopy on GaN Epitaxial Layers

Micro Epitaxial lateral overgrowth of GaN/sapphire by Metal Organic Vapour Phase Epitaxy

GaN/sapphire layers have been grown by Metal Organic Vapour Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE). An amorphous silicon nitride layer is deposited using a SiH4/NH3 mixture prior to the growth of the low temperature GaN buffer layer. Such a process induces a 3D nucleation at the early beginning of the growth, resulting in a kind of maskless ELO process with random opening sizes. This produces a significant decrease of the threading dislocation (TD) density compared to the best GaN/sapphire templates. Ultra Low Dislocation density (ULD) GaN layers were obtained with TD density as low as 7×107cm−2 as measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM), cathodoluminescence and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Time-resolved photoluminescence experiments show that the lifetime of the A free exciton is principally limited by capture onto residual donors, similar to the situation for nearly dislocation-free homoepitaxial layers.

Exciton dynamics in thick GaN MOVPE epilayers deposited on sapphire

Time-resolved photoluminescence spectra have been recorded on three GaN epitaxial layers of thickness 2.5 μm, 7 μm and 16 μm, at various temperatures ranging from 8K to 300K. The layers were deposited by MOVPE on (0001) sapphire substrates with standard AlN buffer layers. To achieve good homogeneities, the growth was in-situ monitored by laser reflectometry. All GaN layers showed sharp excitonic peaks in cw PL and three excitonic contributions were seen by reflectivity. The recombination dynamics of excitons depends strongly upon the layer thickness. For the thinnest layer, exponential decays with τ ~ 35 ps have been measured for both XA and XB free excitons. For the thickest layer, the decay becomes biexponential with τ1 ~ 80 ps and τ2 ~ 250 ps. These values are preserved up to room temperature. By solving coupled rate equations in a four-level model, this evolution is interpreted in terms of the reduction of density of both shallow impurities and deep traps, versus layer thickness, roughly following a L−1 law.

Excitons bound to surface defects in GaN

Sharp intense peaks are sometimes detected in the low-temperature photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of undoped GaN samples in the photon energy range of 3.0 – 3.46 eV. Some of these peaks can be attributed to excitons bound to dislocations and inversion domains, whereas some others originate from the GaN surface because they can be affected essentially by surface treatment. In our samples, grown by molecular beam epitaxy on sapphire substrate, the 3.42 eV peak always disappeared after removing the surface layer by etching for a few seconds in hot phosphoric acid. Atomic force microscopy images confirmed that such light etching modifies the surface morphology, although the etched depth is negligibly small. Moreover, intensities of two other peaks (at 3.32 and 3.35 eV) were observed to depend on sample etching, as well as on the length of subsequent exposure to air. The 3.32 and 3.35 eV peaks evolved with time of UV illumination, increasing by several times and demonstrating memory effect at low temperature. We attribute the 3.42 and 3.35 eV peaks to bound excitons, whereas the 3.32 eV peak is tentatively attributed to a surface donor-acceptor pair transition.