The most effective method of producing p-type gallium nitride is currently through incorporation of magnesium. However, such doping leads not only to the desired shallow acceptors but also to the creation of much deeper energy levels. Magnesium-related acceptors have been observed in many optically detected magnetic resonance experiments and their magnetic properties, as characterized by the g values of the holes which they trap, have been found to vary significantly according to the growth conditions and doping levels. The purpose of the present paper is to present a model that accounts for these observations. The model assumes that, in the deep acceptors, the hole is located in an atomic orbital of p character, presumed to be on a nitrogen atom. The orbital degeneracy is partly removed by the wurtzite crystal field and finally by a reduction in local symmetry associated with the relative positions of the magnesium dopant and the nitrogen atom upon which the hole is localized. Further changes in the local crystal field are caused by the presence of nearby defects or by strain. These changes in the crystal field are accompanied by changes in acceptor depth. The approach leads to the correct g values and the correct correlation between the g values and acceptor depth for reasonable choices of the parameters. In the limit that the low symmetry fields become small, the model evolves to one that is consistent with the correct forms of the ground and near-ground Kramers doublets that are observed by other workers in studies of shallow acceptors in material that is not doped with magnesium. Finally, the model is shown to be entirely consistent with a range of acceptor states of different depths being formed by simple substitution of a magnesium ion at a gallium site, rather than by the creation of more complicated defects. The conclusion also highlights the need for the GaN to be of high crystalline quality if effective p-type doping is to be achieved.

Non-polar (11–20) GaN with significantly improved crystal quality has been achieved by means of overgrowth on regularly arrayed micro-rod templates on sapphire in comparison with standard non-polar GaN grown without any patterning processes on sapphire. Our overgrown GaN shows massively reduced linewidth of X-ray rocking curves with typical values of 270 arcsec along the [0001] direction and 380 arcsec along the [1–100] direction, which are among the best reports. Detailed X-ray measurements have been performed in order to investigate strain relaxation and in-plane strain distribution. The study has been compared with the standard non-polar GaN grown without any patterning processes and an extra non-polar GaN sample overgrown on a standard stripe-patterned template. The standard non-polar GaN grown without involving any patterning processes typically exhibits highly anisotropic in-plane strain distribution, while the overgrown GaN on our regularly arrayed micro-rod templates shows a highly isotropic in-plane strain distribution. Between them is the overgrown non-polar GaN on the stripe-patterned template. The results presented demonstrate the major advantages of using our regularly arrayed micro-rod templates for the overgrowth of non-polar GaN, leading to both high crystal quality and isotropic in-plane strain distribution, which is important for the further growth of any device structures.

2-μm micro-disks containing InGaN/GaN quantum wells supported on a tiny Si nanotip are fabricated via microsphere lithography followed by dry and wet etch processes. The micro-disks are studied by photoluminescence at both room-temperature and 10 K. Optically pumped blue lasing at room-temperature is observed via whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) with a lasing threshold as low as 8.43 mJ/cm2. Optical resonances in the micro-disks are studied through numerical computations and finite-difference time-domain simulations. The WGMs are further confirmed through the measured broadband transmission spectrum, whose transmission minima coincide well with predicted WGM frequencies.

Optically-detected magnetic resonance (ODMR) and positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) experiments have been employed to study magnesium-doped GaN layers grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy. As the Mg doping level is changed, the combined experiments reveal a strong correlation between the vacancy concentrations and the intensity of the red photoluminescence band at 1.8 eV. The analysis provides strong evidence that the emission is due to recombination in which electrons both from effective mass donors and from deeper donors recombine with deep centers, the deep centers being vacancy-related defects.Deep defects play a key role in the performance limits and aging effects of GaN-based light-emitting devices. They also lead to photoluminescence (PL) at energies well below the band-gap. For example, PL and opticallydetected magnetic resonance (ODMR) studies [1,2,3,4] have suggested that deep defects are responsible for the red (1.8 eV) luminescence band which is often observed in Mg-doped GaN and that the band is due to recombination emission in which vacancy-dopant complexes are involved [1,2]. However, this proposal was mainly based on indirect evidence and on previous experience of II -VI compounds, and further experimental confirmation is therefore needed. The present study involved the use of both ODMR and positron annihilation spectroscopy (PAS) on the same set of samples covering a range of Mg doping levels and we have established a correlation between the ODMR spectra (obtained by monitoring the red PL) and the PAS results.ODMR is well established as a means of investigating centers involved in recombination processes in semiconductors [5,6]. For a detailed description of the technique and our ODMR system, see Ref. [7]. The ODMR was carried out at 14 GHz with the specimen at 2K. The PL was excited with a UV argon-ion laser (363.8/351.1 nm). The microwaves were chopped at 605 Hz and changes in the PL intensity caused by magnetic resonance were monitored at this frequency as the magnetic field was slowly swept. PAS with a slow positron beam is an effective tool for the investigation of open volume defects such as neutral or negatively charged vacancies in semiconductor films. When positrons annihilate electrons in semiconductors the resulting gamma ray energy spectrum, peaked at 511 keV, is Doppler-broadened (since the electrons have a range of momenta). The annihilation linewidth is characterized by quantities S (W ), defined as the central (wing) fraction of the line. The value of S (W ) is characteristic of the material under study, but * Electronic address: d.wolverson@bath.ac.uk is generally higher (lower) when vacancies are present [8]. Measurements of S (W ) can thus be used to monitor vacancy concentrations. In the present work, singledetector Doppler-broadening PAS was performed using a magnetic transport positron beam system [9]. Positrons were implanted into the layers at energies in the range 0.1 -30 keV, corresponding to mean depths up to 1.5 nm.Details of the growth of the GaN:Mg sampl...

GaN-based micro-dome optical cavities supported on Si pedestals have been demonstrated by dry etching through gradually shrinking microspheres followed by wet-etch undercutting. Optically pumped whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) have been observed in the near-ultraviolet within the mushroom-like cavities, which do not support Fabry-Pérot resonances. The WGMs blue-shift monotonously as the excitation energies are around the lasing threshold. Concurrently, the mode-hopping effect is observed as the gain spectrum red-shifts under higher excitations. As the excitation energy density exceeds ∼15.1 mJ/cm2, amplified spontaneous emission followed by optical lasing is attained at room temperature, evident from a super-linear increase in emission intensity together with linewidth reduction to ∼0.7 nm for the dominant WGM. Optical behaviors within these WGM microcavities are further investigated using numerical computations and three-dimensional finite-difference time-domain simulations.