Influence of polarization fields and depletion fields on photoluminescence of AlGaN/GaN multiple quantum well structures

We report on a detailed study of low temperature photoluminescence (PL) in Al0.07Ga0.93N/GaN multiple quantum wells (MQWs). The structures were grown on sapphire with the conventional low temperature AlN nucleation layer and thick GaN buffer layer. Several sets of 5 QW MQW samples were studied, one set with Si doping in the barriers up to or above the metallic limit. Nominally undoped MQW samples were also studied. The spectral behaviour of the doped samples was strongly affected by the near surface depletion field, causing overlap of different spectra from non-equivalent QWs. The QWs closest to the surface are presumably inactive in some samples, due to a very high depletion field. For the case of undoped samples, on the other hand, the near surface QWs are active and most prominent in the PL spectra. The structure from discrete well width variations is here resolved in the PL spectra. The results demonstrate that for structures with no additional capping layer both the depletion field and the polarisation fields need to be considered in the interpretation of experimental data. The theoretically estimated fields in this work are consistent with the experimental spectra. The presence of localisation even in the case of metallic samples, as observed by a constant PL decay time independent of doping, is discussed in terms of penetration of the hole wave functions into the AlGaN barriers. This localisation is also manifested in a sizeable LO phonon coupling strength in all samples studied.