Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (TDPL), one of the most effective and powerful optical characterisation methods, is widely used to investigate carrier transport and localized states in semiconductor materials. Resonant excitation and non-resonant excitation are the two primary methods of researching this issue. In this study, the application ranges of the different excitation modes are confirmed by analysing the TDPL characteristics of GaN-based light-emitting diodes. For resonant excitation, the carriers are generated only in the quantum wells, and the TDPL features effectively reflect the intrinsic photoluminescence characteristics within the wells and offer certain advantages in characterising localized states and the quality of the wells. For non-resonant excitation, both the wells and barriers are excited, and the carriers that drift from the barriers can contribute to the luminescence under the driving force of the built-in field, which causes the existing equations to become inapplicable. Thus, non-resonant excitation is more suitable than resonant excitation for studying carrier transport dynamics and evaluating the internal quantum efficiency. The experimental technique described herein provides fundamental new insights into the selection of the most appropriate excitation mode for the experimental analysis of carrier transport and localized states in p-n junction devices.

Photoluminescence (PL) is a nondestructive and powerful method to investigate carrier recombination and transport characteristics in semiconductor materials. In this study, the temperature dependences of photoluminescence of GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs multi-quantum wells samples with and without p-n junction were measured under both resonant and non-resonant excitation modes. An obvious increase of photoluminescence(PL) intensity as the rising of temperature in low temperature range (T < 50 K), is observed only for GaAs-AlxGa1-xAs quantum wells sample with p-n junction under non-resonant excitation. The origin of the anomalous increase of integrated PL intensity proved to be associated with the enhancement of carrier drifting because of the increase of carrier mobility in the temperature range from 15 K to 100 K. For non-resonant excitation, carriers supplied from the barriers will influence the temperature dependence of integrated PL intensity of quantum wells, which makes the traditional methods to acquire photoluminescence characters from the temperature dependence of integrated PL intensity unavailable. For resonant excitation, carriers are generated only in the wells and the temperature dependence of integrated PL intensity is very suitable to analysis the photoluminescence characters of quantum wells.

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) in the wavelength region of 535–570 nm are still inefficient, which is known as the “green gap” problem. Light in this range causes maximum luminous sensation in the human eye and is therefore advantageous for many potential uses. Here, we demonstrate a high-brightness InGaN LED with a normal voltage in the “green gap” range based on hybrid multi-quantum wells (MQWs). A yellow-green LED device is successfully fabricated and has a dominant wavelength, light output power, luminous efficiency and forward voltage of 560 nm, 2.14 mW, 19.58 lm/W and 3.39 V, respectively. To investigate the light emitting mechanism, a comparative analysis of the hybrid MQW LED and a conventional LED is conducted. The results show a 2.4-fold enhancement of the 540-nm light output power at a 20-mA injection current by the new structure due to the stronger localization effect, and such enhancement becomes larger at longer wavelengths. Our experimental data suggest that the hybrid MQW structure can effectively push the efficient InGaN LED emission toward longer wavelengths, connecting to the lower limit of the AlGaInP LEDs’ spectral range, thus enabling completion of the LED product line covering the entire visible spectrum with sufficient luminous efficacy.