Epitaxial Growth and Characteristics of Nonpolar a-Plane InGaN Films with Blue-Green-Red Emission and Entire In Content Range

Abstract

Nonpolar ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) plane In x Ga1−x N epilayers comprising the entire In content (x) range were successfully grown on nanoscale GaN islands by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The structural and optical properties were studied intensively. It was found that the surface morphology was gradually smoothed when x increased from 0.06 to 0.33, even though the crystalline quality was gradually declined, which was accompanied by the appearance of phase separation in the In x Ga1−x N layer. Photoluminescence wavelengths of 478 and 674 nm for blue and red light were achieved for x varied from 0.06 to 0.33. Furthermore, the corresponding average lifetime (τ 1/e ) of carriers for the nonpolar InGaN film was decreased from 406 ps to 267 ps, indicating that a high-speed modulation bandwidth can be expected for nonpolar InGaN-based light-emitting diodes. Moreover, the bowing coefficient (b) of the ( 11 2 ¯ 0 ) plane InGaN was determined to be 1.91 eV for the bandgap energy as a function of x.