Comparative study of InGaN/GaN multi-quantum wells in polar (0001) and semipolar (11-22) GaN-based light emitting diodes

We investigated the crystal and the optical properties of GaN-based blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) which were simultaneously grown on c-plane (0001) and semipolar (11-22) GaN templates by using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The X-ray rocking curves (XRCs) full width at half maximums (FWHMs) of c-plane (0001) and semipolar (11-22) GaN templates were 275 and 889 arcsec, respectively. In addition, high-resolution X-ray ω-2θ scan showed that satellite peaks of semipolar (11-22) InGaN quantum-wells (QWs) was weaker and broader than that of c-plane (0001) InGaN QWs, indicating that the interface quality of c-plane (0001) QWs was superior to that of semipolar (11-22) QWs. Photoluminescence (PL) and electroluminescence (EL) results showed that the emission intensity and the FWHMs of polar c-plane (0001) LED were much higher and narrower than those of semipolar (11-22) LED, respectively. From these results, we believed that relative poor crystal quality of semipolar (11-22) GaN template might give rise to the poor interfacial quality of QWs, resulting in lower output power than conventional c-plane (0001) GaN-based LEDs.