Recombination dynamics of excitons with low non-radiative component in semi-polar (10-11)-oriented GaN/AlGaN multiple quantum wells

Optical properties of GaN/Al0.2Ga0.8N multiple quantum wells grown with semi-polar (10-11) orientation on patterned 7 degrees-off Si (001) substrates have been investigated. Studies performed at 8 K reveal the in-plane anisotropic behavior of the QW photoluminescence (PL) intensity for this semipolar orientation. The time resolved PL measurements were carried out in the temperature range from 8 to 295 K to deduce the effective recombination decay times, with respective radiative and non-radiative contributions. The non-radiative component remains relatively weak with increasing temperature, indicative of high crystalline quality. The radiative decay time is a consequence of contribution from both localized and free excitons. We report an effective density of interfacial defects of 2.3 x 10(12) cm(-2) and a radiative recombination time of tau(loc) = 355 ps for the localized excitons. This latter value is significantly larger than those reported for the non-polar structures, which we attribute to the presence of a weak residual electric field in the semi-polar QW layers. (c) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.