Non-Polar Wurtzite (1120) GaN/AlN Quantum Dots for Highly Efficient Opto-Electronic Devices

Abstract

In III-nitride quantum dots (QDs), optical transition rate is very low because of the large built-in electrostatic field caused by the spontaneous polarization (SP) and piezoelectric (PZ) effects. In this work, we study the screening potential which is a solution of the self-consistent Hartree equation taking into account the built-in electrostatic field and its effect on light emission characteristics of non-polar wurtzite (WZ) (112¯0) GaN/AlN QD. It is found that the light emission intensity of the non-polar (112¯0) GaN/AlN QD structure is expected to be about four times larger than that of the c-plane (0001) GaN/AlN QD structure because the y-polarized matrix elements in the non-polar QD are larger than that in the c-plane QD. These predictions indicate that non-polar GaN/AlN QD structure have strong potential for highly efficient opto-electronic devices.