Growth and luminescence properties of III-N:Er materials doped during chemical-beam epitaxy

摘要

The incorporation and optical activation of Er in III-N optically-pumped and electroluminescent structures has been studied. For the first time, strong Er~(3+)-related photoluminescence (PL) was measured at 300K for GaN:Er doped during growth on c-plane Al_2O_3 and SI. Also, room temperature electroluminescence was observed for simple GaN:Er structures on Si. Experiments to evaluate the effects C and O on the optical activity of Er indicated that these impurities enhance Er PL and EL in GN. GaN films boped with Er to a concentration of 3x10~(18) cm~9-3) with [O] approx 10~(20) cm~(-3) and [C] approx 10~(21)cm~(-3) luminesce at 1.54 #mu#m with an intensity approx 2 orders of magnitude greater than films with oxygen and carbon backgrounds of less than 10~(19) cm~(-3). Implantation and activation annealing was also shown to increase Er~(3+) signal in p(Mg)-i(Er)-n(Si) structures where C and O implant profiles wer made to coincide with the Er-doped layers. The thermal PL quenching behavior was also markedly different for samples of varying O and C content. Er~(3+)photoluminescence from Gan:Er/Al_2O_3 samples with high O and C concentrations quenched by only 10