Electrical injection to contactless near-surface InGaN quantum well

Journal Article · Mon Aug 03 04:00:00 EDT 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4928248· OSTI ID:22489047

Svensk, O.; Suihkonen, S. ^[1]; Kivisaari, P.; Oksanen, J. ^[2]

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1. Department of Micro- and Nanosciences, Aalto University, P.O. Box 13500, FI-00076 Aalto (Finland)
2. Department of Biomedical Engineering and Computational Science, Aalto University, P.O. Box 12200, FI-00076 Aalto (Finland)

Charge injection to the prevailing and emerging light-emitting devices is almost exclusively based on the double heterojunction (DHJ) structures that have remained essentially unchanged for decades. In this letter, we report the excitation of a near surface indium gallium nitride (InGaN) quantum well (QW) by bipolar carrier diffusion from a nearby electrically excited pn-homojunction. The demonstrated near surface QW emitter is covered only by a 10 nm GaN capping leaving the light-emitting mesa perfectly free of metals, other contact, or current spreading structures. The presented proof-of-principle structure, operating approximately with a quantum efficiency of one fifth of a conventional single QW reference structure, provides conclusive evidence of the feasibility of using diffusion injection to excite near surface light-emitting structures needed, e.g., for developing light emitters or photo-voltaic devices based on nanoplasmonics or free-standing nanowires. In contrast to the existing DHJ solutions or optical pumping, our approach allows exciting nanostructures without the need of forming a DHJ, absorbing layers or even electrical contacts on the device surface.

• OSTI ID: 22489047
• Journal Information: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 5 Vol. 107; ISSN APPLAB; ISSN 0003-6951
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
EXCITATION
GALLIUM NITRIDES
HETEROJUNCTIONS
LAYERS
NANOWIRES
OPTICAL PUMPING
QUANTUM EFFICIENCY
QUANTUM WELLS
SURFACES