Aluminum Nitride Nanowire Light Emitting Diodes: Breaking the Fundamental Bottleneck of Deep Ultraviolet Light Sources

Abstract

Despite broad interest in aluminum gallium nitride (AlGaN) optoelectronic devices for deep ultraviolet(DUV) applications, the performance of conventional Al(Ga)N planar devices drastically decays when approaching the AlN end, including low internal quantum efficiencies (IQEs) and high device operation voltages. Here we show that these challenges can be addressed by utilizing nitrogen (N) polar Al(Ga)N nanowires grown directly on Si substrate. By carefully tuning the synthesis conditions, a record IQE of 80%can be realized with N-polar AlN nanowires, which is nearly ten times higher compared to high quality planar AlN. The first 210 nm emitting AlN nanowire light emitting diodes (LEDs) were achieved, with a turn on voltage of about 6 V, which is significantly lower than the commonly observed 20 40 V. This can be ascribed to both efficient Mg doping by controlling the nanowire growth rate and N-polarity induced internal electrical field that favors hole injection. In the end, high performance N-polar AlGaN nanowire LEDs with emission wavelengths covering the UV-B/C bands were also demonstrated.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 16, 2015
Accession Number
AD1092165

Entities

People

  • A. T. Connie
  • Hong Guo
  • I. Shih
  • M. Djavid
  • M. H. Dastjerdi
  • Qiwei Wang
  • S. Sadaf
  • S. Zhao
  • X. D. Liu
  • X. H. Kong
  • Z. Mi

Organizations

  • McGill University

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aluminum Nitrides
  • Charge Carriers
  • Compound Semiconductors
  • Electron Microscopy
  • Electrons
  • Energy Bands
  • Gallium Nitrides
  • Heterojunctions
  • Lasers
  • Light Sources
  • Optical Properties
  • Optoelectronic Devices
  • P-N Junctions
  • Quantum Efficiency
  • Quantum Well Lasers
  • Quantum Wells
  • Semiconductors

Fields of Study

  • Materials science

Readers

  • Nanoscale Plasmonic Nanotechnology
  • Semiconductor Device Technology

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Quantum Computing