Recombination Pathways in Green InGaN/GaN Multiple Quantum Wells

Abstract

This paper reports the transient photoluminescence (PL) properties of an InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well (MQW) light-emitting diode (LED) with green emission. Recombination of localized excitons was proved to be the main microscopic mechanism of green emission in the sample. The PL dynamics were ascribed to two pathways of the exciton recombination, corresponding to the fast decay and the slow decay, respectively. The origins of slow decay and fast decay were assigned to local compositional fluctuations of indium and thickness variations of InGaN layers, respectively. Furthermore, the contributions of two decay pathways to the green PL were found to vary at different emission photon energy. The fraction of fast decay pathway decreased with decreasing photon energy. The slow radiative PL from deep localized exciton recombination suffered less suppression from non-radiative delocalization process, for the higher requested activation energy. All these results supported a clear microscopy mechanism of excitation-emission process of the green MQW LED structure.