We have studied the influence of piezoelectric fields on luminescence properties of GaInN strained quantum wells. Our calculation suggests that an electric field of 1.08 MV/cm is induced by the piezoelectric effect in strained Ga0.87In0.13N grown on GaN. The photoluminescence peak energy of the Ga0.87In0.13N strained quantum wells showed blue shift with increasing excitation intensity. Moreover, the well-width dependence of its luminescence peak energy was well explained when the piezoelectric fields were taken into account. These results clearly showed that the piezoelectric field induced the quantum-confined Stark effect.

We calculated the crystal orientation dependence of piezoelectric fields in wurtzite strained Ga0.9In0.1N/GaN heterostructures. The highest longitudinal piezoelectric field of 0.7 MV/cm can be generated in (0001)-oriented biaxial-strained Ga0.9In0.1N layer coherently grown on GaN. On the contrary, no longitudinal piezoelectric field is induced in strained layers grown along orientations at an off angle of 39° or 90° from (0001). The high symmetry planes with these angles are, for instance, (1124) and (1012) for 39°, and (1120) and (1010) for 90°. We also calculated the crystal orientation dependence of the transition probability in a 3-nm strained Ga0.9In0.1N/GaN quantum well, which indicated that the transition probability with these non-(0001) orientations becomes 2.3 times larger than that with the (0001) orientation. We conclude that high-performance strained nitride-based optical devices can be obtained by control of the crystal orientation.

We have identified piezoelectric fields in strained GaInN/GaN quantum well p-in structures using the quantum-confined Stark effect. The photoluminescence peak of the quantum wells showed a blueshift with increasing applied reverse voltages. This blueshift is due to the cancellation of the piezoelectric field by the reverse bias field. We determined that the piezoelectric field points from the growth surface to the substrate and its magnitude is 1.2 MV/cm for Ga 0.84 In 0.16 N/GaN quantum wells on sapphire substrate. In addition, from the direction of the field, the growth orientation of our nitride epilayers can be determined to be ͑0001͒, corresponding to the Ga face.

We analyze the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of whole-composition-range AlGaN multiquantum wells (MQWs) on AlGaN with various dislocation densities (DDs) by excitation-density-dependent photoluminescence measurement. IQEs of deep ultraviolet/ultraviolet (DUV/UV) MQWs are strongly dependent on the DD. IQE with an excess carrier density of 1×1018 cm-3 changes from 4 to 64% when the DD changes from 6×109 to 2×108 cm-2. This trend is almost the same for DUV/UV MQWs with emission wavelength ranging from 230 to 350 nm. Thus, the reduction of the DD is very important for the realization of a high-IQE DUV/UV active layer.

The composition of alloys in strained ternary alloy layers, Al x Ga1- x N (0<x<0.25) and Ga1- x In x N (0<x<0.20), on thick GaN was precisely determined using the high-resolution X-ray diffraction profile. The band gap of strained AlGaN is found to increase almost linearly according to the AlN molar fraction, while that of strained GaInN has a large bowing parameter of 3.2 eV.