GaN-based nanowire heterostructure arrays epitaxially grown on (001)Si substrates have unique properties and present the potential to realize useful devices. The active light-emitting region in the nanowire heterostructures are usually InGaN disks, whose composition can be varied to tune the emission wavelength. We have demonstrated light emitting diodes and edgeemitting diode lasers with power outputs ~10mW with emission in the 600-1300nm wavelength range. These light sources are therefore useful for a variety of applications, including silicon photonics. Molecular beam epitaxial growth of the nanowire heterostructure arrays on (001)Si substrates and the characteristics of 1.3μm nanowire array edge emitting lasers, guided wave photodiodes and a monolithic photonic integrated circuit designed for 1.3μm operation are described.
GaN-based nanowire arrays have been grown on (001)Si substrate by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy and their structural and optical properties have been determined. InxGa1-xN disks inserted in the nanowires behave as quantum dots with emission ranging from visible to near-infrared. We have exploited these nanowire heterostructure arrays to realize light-emitting diodes and diode lasers in which the quantum dots form the active light emitting media. The fabrication and characteristics of 630nm light-emitting diodes and 1.3μm edge-emitting diode lasers are described.
A silicon-based laser remains an important goal in science and technology. Unfortunately silicon is ill-suited as a light-emitter, prompting the need for alternative high quality light sources integrated with silicon. One such alternative, presented here, is a monolithic III-N edge-emitting laser comprised of a planarized nanowire array. Nanowire heterostructures with InGaN/GaN disk-in-nanowire active regions were grown on (001)silicon and planarized with parylene, forming a composite slab heterostructure supporting a guided mode propagating transverse to the growth direction. From this composite slab, ridge-geometry lasers were fabricated. Lasers with emission at 533 nm (green) and 610 nm (red) are presented here. The lasers are characterized by Jth = 1.76 kA/cm2 (green) and 2.94kA/cm2 (red) under continuous wave current injection. The green lasers have device lifetime of ~7000 hrs. Small-signal modulation measurements have also been performed. The -3dB modulation bandwidth of the green laser is 5.7 GHz.
We report on the properties and growth kinetics of defect-free, photoluminescence (PL) efficient mushroom-like nanowires (MNWs) in the form of ~30nm thick hexagonal-shaped InGaN-nanodisk on GaN nanowires, coexisting with the conventional rod-like InGaN-on-GaN nanowires (RNWs) on (111)-silicon-substrate. When characterized using confocal microscopy (CFM) with 458nm laser excitation, while measuring spontaneous-emission at fixed detection wavelengths, the spatial intensity map evolved from having uniform pixelated emission, to having only an emission ring, and then a round emission spot. This corresponds to the PL emission with increasing indium composition; starting from emission mainly from the RNW, and then the 540 nm emission from one MNWs ensemble, followed by the 590 nm emission from a different MNW ensemble, respectively. These hexagonal-shaped InGaN-nano-disks ensembles were obtained during molecular-beam-epitaxy (MBE) growth. On the other hand, the regular rod-like InGaN-on-GaN nanowires (RNWs) were emitting at a shorter peak wavelength of 490 nm. While the formation of InGaN rod-like nanowire is well-understood, the formation of the hexagonal-shaped InGaN-nanodisk-on-GaN-nanowire requires further investigation. It was postulated to arise from the highly sensitive growth kinetics during plasma-assisted MBE of InGaN at low temperature, i.e. when the substrate temperature was reduced from 800 °C (GaN growth) to <600 °C (InGaN growth), during which sparsely populated metal-droplet formation prevails and further accumulated more indium adatoms due to a higher cohesive bond between metallic molecules.
Green (λ~540 nm) - and red-emitting (λ~610 nm) InGaN/GaN disks-in-nanowires have been grown by RF plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on (001) Silicon substrates. The growth of disks-in-nanowires heterostructures has been optimized and the nanowires have been passivated to achieve radiative efficiencies of 54% and 52% in the green and red InGaN disks, respectively. Radiative efficiency increases significantly (by ~10%) when post-growth passivation of nanowire surface with silicon nitride or parylene is applied. Light emitting diodes on silicon, incorporating InGaN/GaN quantum disks as the active medium have been fabricated and the devices have been characterized. Quantum Confined Stark Effect (QCSE) blue-shift of 7nm and 15nm have been observed in the measured electroluminescence peak of the green and red LEDs respectively, from which polarization fields have been calculated in the disks to be 605kV/cm for green and 1.26MV/cm for red. For green and red LEDs, external quantum efficiency peaks at current densities of ~25A/cm2 and 12A/cm2, respectively. To improve light extraction efficiency, LED heterostructures have been transferred to Ag mirrors from the silicon growth substrate and preliminary device results have been demonstrated.
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