Growth and optical characterization of indirect-gap AlxGa1−xAs alloys

Nonintentionally doped AlxGa1−xAs layers with 0.38 x 0.84 were grown on (100) GaAs substrates by liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) under near-equilibrium conditions. The crystalline quality of the samples was studied by photoluminescence at 2 K and room temperature Raman spectroscopy. The peculiar behavior in the photoluminescence intensities of the indirect bound exciton line and the donor–acceptor pair transition is explained from the evolution of the silicon donor binding energy according to the aluminum composition. It was also possible to observe the excitonic transition corresponding to the AlxGa1−xAs/GaAs interface, despite the disorder and other factors which are normally involved when growing high-aluminum-content layers by this technique. Furthermore, Raman measurements show the quadratic variations of longitudinal optical phonon frequencies with aluminum concentration in good agreement with previous experimental results. In this work we show that high quality indirect-gap AlxGa1−xAs samples can be grown by LPE under near-equilibrium [email protected]

Residual strain effects on the two-dimensional electron gas concentration of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures

Ga-face AlGaN/GaN heterostructures with different sheet carrier concentrations have been studied by photoluminescence and Raman spectroscopy. Compared to bulk GaN, an energy shift of the excitonic emission lines towards higher energies was observed, indicating the presence of residual compressive strain in the GaN layer. This strain was confirmed by the shift of the E2 Raman line, from which biaxial compressive stresses ranging between 0.34 and 1.7 GPa were deduced. The spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations for each layer of the heterostructures have been also calculated. The analysis of these quantities clarified the influence of the residual stress on the sheet electron concentration (ns). Possible causes for the discrepancies between the calculated and experimentally determined sheet carrier densities are briefly [email protected] ; [email protected]