Strain-induced piezoelectric field effects on light emission energy and intensity from AlInGaN/InGaN quantum wells

We report on the effects of the piezoelectric field and well width on the transition energy and intensity for InGaN quantum well structures with GaN or AlInGaN quaternary barriers. It was found that the emission energy of compressively strained GaN/In0.08Ga0.92N quantum wells exhibits a strong well width dependence not accounted for by quantum confinement subband energy shifting alone. However, for unstrained quantum well layers with quaternary barriers, no emission energy dependence on width was observed due to the elimination of the piezoelectric field, which was measured to be at least 0.6 MV/cm for the strained quantum wells. Furthermore, the unstrained quantum wells demonstrated a higher intensity than their strained counterparts for all quantum well widths investigated. The current data will help clarify the origin of emission in InGaN quantum wells. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.