(Invited) Impurity Co-doping of Gallium Nitride Materials for Enhanced Light Emission

Impurity doping of silicon and other semiconductor materials has been an active research area for more than 20 years. There have been two main thrusts of this work, erbium doping to provide infrared light emission in silicon for telecommunications, and doping with other rare earths for full color displays and solid state lighting. Major advances in both of these areas have been achieved through metal-organic chemical vapor deposition synthesis of rare earth doped GaN thin films [1, 2]. However, the low efficiency emission in prototype devices has prevented commercial applications. In this talk, recent results concerning light emission from erbium doped and from europium doped GaN films will be discussed. Experimental data showing enhanced light emission through co-doping of the GaN films will be presented. The role of strain fields and theoretical simulations of location of rare earth ions in the GaN lattice will be included. These results indicate that significant ligh emission can be achieved through co-doping of GaN films.

[1] C. Ugolini, N. Nepal, J. Y. Lin, H. X. Jiang, and J. M. Zavada, Appl. Phys. Lett. 89 151903 (2006).

[2] A. Nishikawa, N. Furukawa, T. Kawasaki, Y. Terai, and Y. Fujiwara, Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 051113 (2010).

[3] P. Kaur, S. S. Sekhon, J.M. Zavada, and Vijay Kumar, Phys. Rev. B (2012).