Temperature Dependence of Electron Leakage Current in InGaN Blue Light-Emitting Diode Structures.

We investigated the temperature dependence of the electron leakage current in the AlGaN electron-blocking layer (EBL) of an InGaN/GaN blue light-emitting diode (LED) structure at temperatures between 20 and 100 °C. The percentage of electron leakage current was experimentally determined by fitting the measured external quantum efficiency of an LED using the ABC recombination model. The electron leakage current decreased significantly as the temperature increased from 20 to 100 °C. The experiment obtained temperature-dependent electron leakage current was also found to agree well with the simulation results. This counter-intuitive temperature dependence of the electron leakage current resulted from an increase in potential barrier for electrons with increasing temperature due to the increased ionized acceptor concentration in the EBL with temperature. Moreover, the results obtained for the temperature-dependent electron leakage were consistent with the thermionic emission model. The results of the temperature dependence reported here are expected to provide insight into the thermal droop of GaN-based LEDs.

Temperature dependence of the Auger recombination coefficient in InGaN/GaN multiple-quantum-well light-emitting diodes.

This study investigated the temperature dependence of the Auger recombination coefficient (C) in an InGaN/GaN blue multiple-quantum-well (MQW) light-emitting diode structure at temperatures between 20 and 100°C. The temperature dependence of C was determined by fitting the measured external quantum efficiency (EQE) data using an analytical model or numerical simulation. In the analytical model, the carrier density in InGaN MQWs was assumed to be constant and independent of temperature. In contrast, the inhomogeneous carrier distribution in MQWs and its temperature-dependent redistribution were included in the numerical simulation. When the analytical model was employed to fit the EQE curve, C decreased with increasing temperature. On the other hand, when the numerical simulation was employed, C increased steadily by ∼31% as the temperature was increased from 20 to 100°C. We found that the temperature-dependent carrier distribution is important to consider when determining the temperature dependence of the Auger recombination coefficient in InGaN MQW structures.

Low-threshold optically pumped lasing in highly strained germanium nanowires.

The integration of efficient, miniaturized group IV lasers into CMOS architecture holds the key to the realization of fully functional photonic-integrated circuits. Despite several years of progress, however, all group IV lasers reported to date exhibit impractically high thresholds owing to their unfavourable bandstructures. Highly strained germanium with its fundamentally altered bandstructure has emerged as a potential low-threshold gain medium, but there has yet to be a successful demonstration of lasing from this seemingly promising material system. Here we demonstrate a low-threshold, compact group IV laser that employs a germanium nanowire under a 1.6% uniaxial tensile strain as the gain medium. The amplified material gain in strained germanium can sufficiently overcome optical losses at 83 K, thus allowing the observation of multimode lasing with an optical pumping threshold density of ~3.0 kW cm-2. Our demonstration opens new possibilities for group IV lasers for photonic-integrated circuits.