Optical monitoring of nonequilibrium carrier lifetime in freestanding GaN by time-resolved four-wave mixing and photoluminescence techniques

Optical monitoring of nonequilibrium carrier dynamics was performed in freestanding GaN. Four-wave mixing kinetics directly provided carrier lifetime of 5.4 ns in the layer, while complementary measurements by photoluminescence technique revealed the fast transients with subnanosecond decay time. Numerical modeling of photoluminescence decay taking into account the carrier spatial-temporal dynamics allowed us to attribute an origin of the fast photoluminescence transients to carrier diffusion to the bulk and to reabsorption of the backward emission. The studies demonstrated carrier diffusion limited applicability of the time-resolved photoluminescence technique for carrier lifetime measurements in a high quality thick III-nitride layers. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.