Well-thickness dependence of emission from GaN/AlGaN separate confinement heterostructures

We investigated the effects of well thickness on spontaneous and stimulated emission (SE) in GaN/AlGaN separate confinement heterostructures (SCHs), grown by low-pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The SCH wells are unstrained and lattice-matched to a GaN buffer layer. Our series of SCHs had GaN well thicknesses of 3, 5, 9, and 15 nm. We explain the spontaneous emission peak energy positions of the SCHs in terms of spontaneous and strain-induced piezoelectric polarizations. At 10 K, the carrier lifetime was found to be lowest for a 3 nm well, and the SE threshold was lowest for a 5 nm well. We show that the screening of the piezoelectric held and the electron-hole separation are strongly dependent on the well thickness and have a profound effect on the optical properties of the GaN/AlGaN SCHs. The implications of this study on the development of near- and deep-ultraviolet light emitters are discussed.