Dependence of resonant coupling between surface plasmons and an InGaN quantum well on metallic structure

The authors demonstrate the metallic-structure dependent surface plasmon (SP) coupling behaviors with a blue-emitting InGaN/GaN quantum well (QW), which is 10 nm away from the metallic structures. The SP-QW coupling behaviors in the areas of semiconductor surface coated with silver thin film and silver nanoparticles are compared. It is found that both the suppression of photoluminescence (PL) intensity and the reduction of time-resolved PL (TRPL) decay time strongly depend on the metallic morphology. A phenomenological model of carrier relaxation in the SP-QW coupling process is built to fit the TRPL decay profiles for calibrating the reasonable decay time constants of carrier and SP. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.