InAlN has been studied by means of temperature-dependent time-integrated photoluminescence and time-resolved photoluminescence.The variation of PL peak energy did not follow the behavior predicted by Varshni formula, and a faster redshift with increasing temperature was observed. We used a model that took account of the thermal activation and thermal transfer of localized excitons to describe and explain the observed behavior. A good fitting to the experiment result is obtained. We believe the anomalous temperature dependence of PL peak energy shift can be attributed to the temperature-dependent redistribution of localized excitons induced by thermal activation and thermal transfer in the strongly localized states. V-shaped defects are thought to be a major factor causing the strong localized states in our In_(0.153) Al_(0.847) N sample.
The exciton-phonon interaction in Al_(0.4)Ga_(0.6)N/Al_(0.53)Ga_(0.47)N multiple quantum wells(MQWs) is studied by deepultraviolet time-integrated and time-resolved photoluminescence(PL).Up to four longitudinal-optical(LO) phonon replicas of exciton recombination are observed,indicating the strong coupling of excitons with LO phonons in the MQWs.Moreover,the exciton-phonon coupling strength in the MQWs is quantified by the Huang-Rhys factor,and it keeps almost constant in a temperature range from 10 K to 120 K.This result can be explained in terms of effects of fluctuations in the well thickness in the MQWs and the temperature on the exciton-phonon interaction.
Cubic boron nitride(c-BN)thin films were deposited on Si substrates by applying ion beam assisted deposition and then doped by S ion implantation.To produce a uniform depth profile of S ions in c-BN films,the implantation was carried out for the multiple energies.A slight degradation of c-BN crystallinity resulted from ion implantation can be recovered by thermal annealing,keeping the cubic phase content as high as 92%.The resistance reduces from 1010X for the as-deposited c-BN film to 108X after an S implantation of 5 9 1014ions cm-2and annealing at 1,173 K,suggesting an electrical doping effect of S dopant.The electrical resistance of the S-doped c-BN thin film decreases with increasing temperature,indicating semiconductor characteristics.The activation energy of S dopant is estimated to be 0.28±0.01 eV from the temperature dependence of resistance.
The effect of high-temperature annealing on AlN thin film grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition was investigated using atomic force microscopy, Raman spectroscopy, and deep ultra-violet photoluminescence(PL) with the excitation wavelength as short as ～ 177 nm. Annealing experiments were carried out in either N2 or vacuum atmosphere with the annealing temperature ranging from 1200℃ to 1600℃. It is found that surface roughness reduced and compressive strain increased with the annealing temperature increasing in both annealing atmospheres. As to optical properties,a band-edge emission peak at 6.036 eV and a very broad emission band peaking at about 4.7 eV were observed in the photoluminescence spectrum of the as-grown sample. After annealing, the intensity of the band-edge emission peak varied with the annealing temperature and atmosphere. It is also found that a much stronger emission band ranging from 2.5 eV to 4.2 eV is superimposed on the original spectra by annealing in either N2 or vacuum atmosphere. We attribute these deep-level emission peaks to the VAL–ONcomplex in the AlN material.
Low temperature photoluminescence(PL) measurements have been performed for a set of GaN/AlxGa1-xN quantum wells(QWs). The experimental results show that the optical full width at half maximum(FWHM) increases relatively rapidly with increasing Al composition in the AlxGa1-xN barrier, and increases only slightly with increasing GaN well width. A model considering the interface roughness is used to interpret the experimental results. In the model, the FWHM's broadening caused by the interface roughness is calculated based on the triangle potential well approximation. We find that the calculated results accord with the experimental results well.
