Size-dependent optical properties of InGaN quantum dots in GaN nanowires grown by MBE

Abstract

Quantum dots in nanowires (DINWs) are considered as important building blocks for novel nanoscale semiconductor optoelectronic devices. In this paper, pure axial heterojunction InGaN/GaN DINWs are grown by using plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE) system. The InGaN quantum dots (QDs) are disk-like observed by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The diameter of QDs can be controlled by the growth conditions of nanowires (NWs), while the thickness of QDs can be controlled by the growth time of InGaN. Temperature-dependent photoluminescence (TDPL) measurements demonstrate that the PL peak of DINWs with small and uniform sizes shows a general red shift with increasing temperature. However, the PL peak of DINWs with non-uniform sizes shows an abnormal blue shift with increasing temperature, which is due to different internal quantum efficiencies of the DINWs with different sizes.

Keywords

InGaN quantum dots (QDs) / nanowires (NWs) / photoluminescence (PL) / molecular beam epitaxy (MBE)

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Basic Research Program of China (No. 2013CB632804), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 61176015, 61176059, 61210014, 61321004 and 61307024), and the High Technology Research and Development Program of China (No. 2012AA050601).

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

2014 Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg