Nano Express
Improving the emission efficiency of MBE-grown GaN/AlN QDs by strain control
Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, People's Republic of China
Nanoscale Research Letters 2011, 6:611 doi:10.1186/1556-276X-6-611
Published: 2 December 2011Abstract
The quantum-confined stark effect induced by polarization has significant effects on the optical properties of nitride heterostructures. In order to improve the emission efficiency of GaN/AlN quantum dots [QDs], a novel epitaxial structure is proposed: a partially relaxed GaN layer followed by an AlN spacer layer is inserted before the growth of GaN QDs. GaN/AlN QD samples with the proposed structure are grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The results show that by choosing a proper AlN spacer thickness to control the strain in GaN QDs, the internal quantum efficiencies have been improved from 30.7% to 66.5% and from 5.8% to 13.5% for QDs emitting violet and green lights, respectively.
