Demonstration of a III-nitride edge-emitting laser diode utilizing a GaN tunnel junction contact

Role of Temperature in Arsenic-Induced Antisurfactant Growth of GaN Microrods

Due to the antisurfactant properties of arsenic atoms, the self-induced dodecagonal GaN microrods can be grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) in Ga-rich conditions. Since temperature is a key parameter in MBE growth, the role of temperature in the growth of GaN microrods is investigated. The optimal growth temperature window for the formation of GaN microrods is observed to be between 760 and 800 °C. Lowering the temperature to 720 °C did not change the growth mechanism, but the population of irregular and amorphous microrods increased. On the other hand, increasing the growth temperature up to 880 °C interrupts the growth of GaN microrods, due to the re-evaporation of the gallium from the surface. The incorporation of As in GaN microrods is negligible, which is confirmed by X-ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy. Moreover, the photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence characteristics typical for GaN are observed for individual GaN microrods, which additionally confirms that arsenic is not incorporated inside microrods. When the growth temperature is increased, the emission related to the band gap decreases in favor of the defect-related emission. This is typical for bulk GaN and attributed to an increase in the point defect concentration for GaN microrods grown at lower temperatures.

III-Nitride Light-Emitting Devices

III-nitride light-emitting devices have been subjects of intense research for the last several decades owing to the versatility of their applications for fundamental research, as well as their widespread commercial utilization. Nitride light-emitters in the form of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) and lasers have made remarkable progress in recent years, especially in the form of blue LEDs and lasers. However, to further extend the scope of these devices, both below and above the blue emission region of the electromagnetic spectrum, and also to expand their range of practical applications, a number of issues and challenges related to the growth of materials, device design, and fabrication need to be overcome. This review provides a detailed overview of nitride-based LEDs and lasers, starting from their early days of development to the present state-of-the-art light-emitting devices. Besides delineating the scientific and engineering milestones achieved in the path towards the development of the highly matured blue LEDs and lasers, this review provides a sketch of the prevailing challenges associated with the development of long-wavelength, as well as ultraviolet nitride LEDs and lasers. In addition to these, recent progress and future challenges related to the development of next-generation nitride emitters, which include exciton-polariton lasers, spin-LEDs and lasers, and nanostructured emitters based on nanowires and quantum dots, have also been elucidated in this review. The review concludes by touching on the more recent topic of hexagonal boron nitride-based light-emitting devices, which have already shown significant promise as deep ultraviolet and single-photon emitters.

Challenges and Advancement of Blue III-Nitride Vertical-Cavity Surface-Emitting Lasers

Since the first demonstration of (Al, In, Ga)N-based blue vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (VCSELs) in 2008, the maximum output power (P_max) and threshold current density (J_th) has been improved significantly after a decade of technology advancements. This article reviewed the key challenges for the realization of VCSELs with III-nitride materials, such as inherent polarization effects, difficulties in distributed Bragg's reflectors (DBR) fabrication for a resonant cavity, and the anti-guiding effect due to the deposited dielectrics current aperture. The significant tensile strain between AlN and GaN hampered the intuitive cavity design with two epitaxial DBRs from arsenide-based VCSELs. Therefore, many alternative cavity structures and processing technologies were developed; for example, lattice-matched AlInN/GaN DBR, nano-porous DBR, or double dielectric DBRs via various overgrowth or film transfer processing strategies. The anti-guiding effect was overcome by integrating a fully planar or slightly convex DBR as one of the reflectors. Special designs to limit the emission polarization in a circular aperture were also summarized. Growing VCSELs on low-symmetry non-polar and semipolar planes discriminates the optical gain along different crystal orientations. A deliberately designed high-contrast grating could differentiate the reflectivity between the transverse-electric field and transverse-magnetic field, which restricts the lasing mode to be the one with the higher reflectivity. In the future, the III-nitride based VCSEL shall keep advancing in total power, applicable spectral region, and ultra-low threshold pumping density with the novel device structure design and processing technologies.

A bow-free freestanding GaN wafer

For applications as high-brightness light-emitting-diodes, a bow-free freestanding gallium nitride (GaN) wafer 2 inch in diameter and ∼185 μm in thickness was fabricated by process-designing pit and mirror GaN layers grown via hydride-vapor-phase epitaxy, laser lift-off, N-face polishing of the pit GaN layer, and three-step polishing of the mirror GaN layer using 3.0 μm-, 0.5 μm-, and 50 nm-diameter diamond abrasives and by inductively-coupled-plasma reactive-ion etching. The considerably large concave shape of the GaN wafer could be decreased by controlling the removal amount of the Ga-face mirror layer during the first step of the polishing process, which approached a bow-free shape or changed with further polishing; this well correlated with the residual stress of the polished GaN wafer.

For applications as high-brightness light-emitting-diodes, a bow-free freestanding gallium nitride was fabricated by process-designing pit and mirror GaN layers grown via hydride-vapor-phase epitaxy, followed by several polishing and etching methods.

Lasing action in low-resistance nanolasers based on tunnel junctions

We experimentally demonstrate the lasing action of a new nanolaser design with a tunnel junction. By using a heavily doped tunnel junction for hole injection, we can replace the p-type contact material of a conventional nanolaser diode with a low-resistance n-type contact layer. This leads to a significant reduction of the device resistance and lowers the threshold voltage from 5 V to around 0.95 V at 77 K. The lasing behavior is verified by the light output versus the injection current (L-I) characterization and second-order coherence function measurements. Because of less Joule heating during current injection, the nanolaser can be operated at temperatures as high as 180 K under CW pumping. The incorporation of heavily doped tunnel junctions may pave the way for other nanoscale cavity design for improved heat management.

Performance Improvement of GaN Based Laser Diode Using Pd/Ni/Au Metallization Ohmic Contact

We report an investigation of the effects of different metal systems and surface treatment on the contact performance of GaN lasers. We found that multi-element metal alloy and surface chemical treatment are the keys to achieve good ohmic behavior contacts on GaN laser diodes. Pd/Ni/Au contact demonstrates excellent thermal stability and lowest specific contact resistivity in these metal systems. Properly adjusting the thickness of the Pd and Ni layer and pretreating with the KOH solution can further improve the ohmic contact performance. The improved ohmic behavior of the KOH solution pretreated Pd/Ni/Au contact is attributed to removing surface oxides and the reduction of the schottky barrier heights due to the metal Pd has a high work function and the interfacial reactions occurring between the Pd, Ni, Au, and GaN extends into the GaN film. As a result, a low contact resistivity of 1.66 × 10−5 Ω·cm2 can be achieved from Pd(10 nm)/Ni(10 nm)/Au(30 nm) contacts with KOH solution pretreated on top of the laser diode structure. The power of the GaN based laser diode with the Pd/Ni/Au metallization ohmic contact can be enhanced by 1.95 times and the threshold current decreased by 37% compared to that of the conventional ohmic contact Ni/Au.

Efficient tunnel junction contacts for high-power semipolar III-nitride edge-emitting laser diodes

We demonstrate high-power edge-emitting laser diodes (LDs) with tunnel junction contacts grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Under pulsed conditions, lower threshold current densities were observed from LDs with MBE-grown tunnel junctions than from similarly fabricated control LDs with ITO contacts. LDs with tunnel junction contacts grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) were additionally demonstrated. These LDs were fabricated using a p-GaN activation scheme utilizing lateral diffusion of hydrogen through the LD ridge sidewalls. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy measurements of the [Si] and [Mg] profiles in the MBE-grown and MOCVD-grown tunnel junctions were conducted to further investigate the results.

InGaN/GaN microdisks enabled by nanoporous GaN cladding

The fabrication of nanoporous (NP) GaN is proposed as a generic technique to create out-of-plane index guiding for nitride microcavities. Compared to the conventional undercut technique, the proposed technique forms uniformly a low-index NP-GaN layer beneath the entire microcavity. Therefore, it supports all cavity modes (with different cavity geometries), while the undercut technique only supports the modes that reside at the circumference of a circular microcavity. As a proof of concept, GaN microdisk cavities were fabricated with the NP-GaN as the bottom low-index medium. A cold cavity with Q>2,000 was reported under continuous-wave pumping. Lasing was demonstrated with threshold optical pumping power P_th∼60  kW/cm² for the r=10  μm microdisk and P_th∼7  kW/cm² for the r=50  μm microdisk. A rate equation analysis was performed to estimate the spontaneous coupling factor β∼1E-3, which was one order of magnitude higher than the previous report of a nitride microdisk laser with an InGaN quantum well active region. Therefore, NP GaN was proven to be a suitable replacement of the undercut technique for future nitride microcavities applications.

Using tunnel junctions to grow monolithically integrated optically pumped semipolar III-nitride yellow quantum wells on top of electrically injected blue quantum wells

We report a device that monolithically integrates optically pumped (20-21) III-nitride quantum wells (QWs) with 560 nm emission on top of electrically injected QWs with 450 nm emission. The higher temperature growth of the blue light-emitting diode (LED) was performed first, which prevented thermal damage to the higher indium content InGaN of the optically pumped QWs. A tunnel junction (TJ) was incorporated between the optically pumped and electrically injected QWs; this TJ enabled current spreading in the buried LED. Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition enabled the growth of InGaN QWs with high radiative efficiency, while molecular beam epitaxy was leveraged to achieve activated buried p-type GaN and the TJ. This initial device exhibited dichromatic optically polarized emission with a polarization ratio of 0.28. Future improvements in spectral distribution should enable phosphor-free polarized white light emission.