Improved photoluminescence of InGaAsN–(In)GaAsP quantum well by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy using growth pause annealing

Abstract

The metalorganic chemical vapor deposition of a highly strained InGaAsN quantum-well ͑QW͒ surrounded by ͑In͒GaAsP direct barrier layers is investigated. We found that growth pause annealing with AsH 3 , performed immediately before and after the growth of the QW, significantly improves the optical quality of InGaAsN QW with ͑In͒GaAsP direct barriers. The utilization of larger band gap barrier materials, such as InGaAsP or GaAsP, will potentially lead to reduced carrier leakage from the QW laser structures.

Effects of growth pause on the structural and optical properties of InGaAsN–InGaAsP quantum well

“…A similar improvement in PL intensity after growth pause annealing was also observed for structures consisting of InGaAsN QW and GaAs 0.85 P 0.15 barriers [9]. The fact that the growth pause annealing only leads to improvement in structures with phosphorous-containing barriers (InGaAsP and GaAsP), not conventional GaAs barriers, indicates phosphine carry-over as a possible underlying effect.…”

“…The measured room-temperature PL spectrum from the InGaAsN-InGaAsP structures with different pause time of 3-21 s is shown in Fig. 2 [9]. A dramatic increase of 25 times in PL intensity was observed when the pause time increases from 3 s to an optimized value of 14 s. Moreover, no significant wavelength shift was found, indicating a different mechanism of growth pause annealing from the post-growth thermal annealing process, in which a wavelength blue shift is commonly observed [5][6][7].…”

“…In this work, we report a new annealing process performed during the growth pause introduced before and after the QW [9,10] which was found to be critical for structures containing InGaAsN QW and InGaAsP barriers. A systematic optical luminescence and surface morphology characterization study was conducted to understand the underlying mechanism.…”

High-power 1.3-μm InGaAsN strain-compensated lasers fabricated with pulsed anodic oxidation

“…The utilization of larger band-gap barrier materials will lead to a suppression of thermionic carrier leakage, which will, in turn, lead to a reduction in the temperature sensitivity of the threshold-current density of the lasers, in particular, at high-temperature operation. 15 The strain compensation of InGaAsN QW lasers using larger band-gap GaAsP tensile-strained barriers has been reported by Tansu et al 7,9,12,16 and W. Li et al 11 In general, wafers for InGaAsN lasers are grown either by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) 4,5 or by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). 2,9,10 Very high output power operations have been demonstrated in InGaAsN broad-area lasers grown by both MBE (ϳ4.2 W at a heatsink temperature of 10°C and with facet coating) 3 and MOCVD (1.8 W at a heatsink temperature of 20°C and with facet coating).…”

Thermal quenching mechanism of photoluminescence in 1.55μm GaInNAsSb∕Ga(N)As quantum-well structures

“…Contrary to previous studies which mainly focus on the exploitation of the large conduction band offset, we pay special attention to the effect of reduced valence band offset on the QW optical properties, a subject which has received little consideration so far. 15,16 The samples were grown on n + -GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy using Ga as described before. 17 The basic double-QW structure consists of 7 nm Ga 0.6 In 0.4 NAsSb QWs and 20 nm Ga͑N͒As barriers.…”