Investigation of E1(LO) phonon-plasmon coupled modes and critical points in In1-xGaxN thin films by optical reflectance measurements

Low energy optical modes of molecular beam epitaxy-grown In1-xGaxN thin films with 0 < x < 0.6 are investigated using infrared reflectance measurements. We found that the reflectance of the films for wave vectors in the range from 600 to 800 cm(-1) is determined by the high energy E-1(LO)-plasmon coupled modes. In the higher energy regime of the UV-visible reflectance spectrum of InN, critical points with energies 4.75, 5.36, and 6.12 eV belonging to A and B structures are observed. The energies of these critical points increase with increasing values of x, similar to the band gap energy of these films. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3428368]