Origin of defect-related photoluminescence bands in doped and nominally undoped GaN

The efficient room-temperature photoluminescence bands of wurtzite GaN, which are peaked in the red (1.8 eV), the yellow (2.2 eV), and the blue (2.8 eV) spectral range, have been studied as a function of doping (species and concentration) and excitation power density (PD): It is shown that the yellow and the blue band are induced by Si and Mg doping, respectively, while codoping with Si and Mg generates the red band. At high-doping levels, the yellow and the blue band reveal strong peak shifts to higher energy with increasing PD providing very strong evidence for their distant donor-acceptor (DA) pair recombination character. The deep centers involved in DA recombination having electrical activity opposite to that of the shallow level of the dopant, are suggested to arise from self-compensation and to be vacancy-dopant associates. Self-compensation is found to be weak in the case of Si doping, but significant for Mg doping. A recombination model is presented, which accounts for the essential properties of all three bands in deliberately doped GaN. These results also suggest that the yellow and the blue bands in nominally undoped GaN arise from distant DA pairs involving residual Si and Mg impurities, respectively, as well as their respective vacancy associates. [S0163-1829(99)06707-7].