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Plasma Heating in Highly Excited GaN/AlGaN Multiple Quantum Wells
Plasma Heating in Highly Excited GaN/AIGaN Multiple Quantum @@lvEu Wells w f + 1998 %p, K. C. Zeng, R. Mair, J. Y. Liz and H. X. Jiang a) ` fabrication and understanding of MQW lasers [2-5]. For the design of these lasers, one on RT optical studies. Our results revealed that in the GaN/AIGaN MQWS, plasma heating strongly effects the carrier distribution between the confined and unconfined band-to-band and fke excitonic transitions [7]. In the MQW sample under low the unconfined states as determined from the band structure. sample under high Lxc, we varied the excitation intensity by one order of magnitude from 0.110 to IO. The carrier density is estimated to be about N=1012/cm2 (at UC= 0.1 Io) to 1013/cm2 (at 1=== l.). We plotted the PL spectra for four representative excitation fimction of injected carrier density N (open squares). The ratio starts at a value of about 18% for N=1012/cm2 (& = O. lb), and reaches a value over 64 `XO for N=1013/cm2 (& = regions is a loss to optical gain. The carrier density is ve~ high in our experiment and an electron-hole plasma (EHP) state is expected. Because the carrier transfer process plasma temperature. The laser pump energy is about 4.3 eV, which is far above the energy band gap of the sample studied here. This may result in a hot carrier population carrier densities and plasma temperatures. Using a phenomenological expression based The calculated ratio of carriers in the unconfked to the confined states (Ima~ kf) as a finction of carrier density at different temperatures are plotted in Fig. 3 (solid lines). The figure shows that the experiment results can only be explained by plasma heating of the injected carriers at high & ( TP > TJ. The transparency carrier densities for GaN/AIXGal.XN MQW structures with well thickness from 2 to 4 nm were calculated to be around 1x 1012/cm2 [10]. It is thus obvious from Fig. 3 that under high carrier injection density above the transparency density, the plasma temperature, TP, is no longer a constant. It rapidly increases with injected carrier density. Our results indicate that above the transparency carrier density, the carrier temperature may be a few due to the carrier plasma heating effect. Plasma heating makes it more difficult to obtain high quantum efficiency in the on improving the quantum efficiency of fiture GaN/AlxGalJ MQW laser structures, form an EHP and (b) plasma heating of the injected carriers strongly affects the carrier above the transparency density, the carrier plasma temperature may be a few hundred carrier density. The importance of plasma heating has both theoretical and experimental implications. It complicates the modeling of III-N lasers because plasma temperature The ratio of the PL intensities of the 25 ~ GaN/AIO.w&.mN MQW sample from fimction of injected carrier density. The open squares are experimental data and