Ray-Ming Lin

High-quality InGaN∕GaN heterojunctions and their photovoltaic effects

High-quality p-GaN∕i-In0.1Ga0.9N∕n-GaN heterojunctional epilayers are grown on (0001)-oriented sapphire substrates by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The Pendellosung fringes around the InGaN peak in high-resolution x-ray diffraction (HRXRD) confirm a sharp interface between InGaN and GaN films. The corresponding HRXRD and photoluminescence measurements demonstrate that there is no observable phase separation. The improvement in crystal quality yields high-performance photovoltaic cells with open-circuit voltage of around 2.1eV and fill factor up to 81% under standard AM 1.5 condition. The dark current-voltage measurements show very large shunt resistance, implying an insignificant leakage current in the devices and therefore achieving the high fill factor in the illuminated case.

TEMPERATURE DEPENDENCE OF PHOTOLUMINESCENCE SPECTRA IN INAS/GAAS QUANTUM DOT SUPERLATTICES WITH LARGE THICKNESSES

In this report, we investigate the thermal relaxation of the photoluminescence (PL) in InAs/GaAs quantum dot superlattices with large thicknesses that have two to more than three times the critical thickness for spontaneous island formation. It is found that the linewidth first decreases and then increases with increasing temperature. In addition to thermionic emission, we suggest that carrier repopulation among quantum dots plays an important role in the PL quenching. The temperature dependence of PL peak energy following a Varshni relation was attributed to the dilation of lattice and electron-lattice interaction. The emission intensity quenches rapidly when the temperature rises to around 60 K, indicating the existence of defect-related centers in the vicinity of InAs/GaAs interfaces. In addition, we performed the measurement of the activation energy of PL quenching at different emission energy. We found that the loss mechanism of PL quenching based on the activation of electron-hole pairs from quantum...

Improved Conversion Efficiency of GaN/InGaN Thin-Film Solar Cells

In this letter, we report on the fabrication and photovoltaic characteristics of p-i-n GaN/InGaN thin-film solar cells. The thin-film solar cells were fabricated by removing sapphire using a laser lift-off technique and, then, transferring the remaining p-i-n structure onto a Ti/Ag mirror-coated Si substrate via wafer bonding. The mirror structure is helpful to enhance light absorption for a solar cell with a thin absorption layer. After the thin-film process for a conventional sapphire-based p-i-n solar cell, the device exhibits an enhancement factor of 57.6% in current density and an increment in conversion efficiency from 0.55% to 0.80%. The physical origin for the photocurrent enhancement in the thin-film solar cell is related to multireflection of light by the mirror structure.

Material properties of compositional graded InxGa1−xAs and InxAl1−xAs epilayers grown on GaAs substrates

The residual strain, crystallographic tilt, and surface topography of InxGa1−xAs and InxAl1−xAs (0<x<0.3) epilayers grown on GaAs substrates are investigated. The residual strain of the InxAl1−xAs grown on graded InyAl1−yAs is shown to be strongly dependent on the thickness of the underlying‐graded buffer layers and is larger than that of the InGaAs of the same structure. The crystallographic tilt of the InGaAs epilayers with respect to GaAs substrate is found to be strongly dependent on the growth temperature as well as the layer structure of the underlying buffer layer, while that of InAlAs is insensitive to these two factors. This behavior is attributed to the different roughness of the growth front between these two material systems and is consistent with the observation by atomic force microscopy.

A broadband achromatic metalens in the visible

Metalenses consist of an array of optical nanoantennas on a surface capable of manipulating the properties of an incoming light wavefront. Various flat optical components, such as polarizers, optical imaging encoders, tunable phase modulators and a retroreflector, have been demonstrated using a metalens design. An open issue, especially problematic for colour imaging and display applications, is the correction of chromatic aberration, an intrinsic effect originating from the specific resonance and limited working bandwidth of each nanoantenna. As a result, no metalens has demonstrated full-colour imaging in the visible wavelength. Here, we show a design and fabrication that consists of GaN-based integrated-resonant unit elements to achieve an achromatic metalens operating in the entire visible region in transmission mode. The focal length of our metalenses remains unchanged as the incident wavelength is varied from 400 to 660 nm, demonstrating complete elimination of chromatic aberration at about 49% bandwidth of the central working wavelength. The average efficiency of a metalens with a numerical aperture of 0.106 is about 40% over the whole visible spectrum. We also show some examples of full-colour imaging based on this design.Integrating the Pancharatnam–Berry phase with integrated resonant nanoantennas in a metalens design produces an achromatic device capable of full-colour imaging in the visible range in transmission mode.

Growth and Characterization of p-InGaN/i-InGaN/n-GaN Double-Heterojunction Solar Cells on Patterned Sapphire Substrates

In this letter, InGaN-based solar cells with a p-InGaN/i-InGaN/n-GaN double-heterojunction structure were fabricated and characterized. Two kinds of sapphire substrates [i.e., a conventional sapphire substrate (CSS) and a patterned sapphire substrate (PSS)] were used for epitaxial growth. Both the solar cells grown on the CSS and the PSS demonstrated a high open-circuit voltage of 2.05 and 2.08 V, respectively. However, the short-circuit current of the solar cells grown on the PSS showed an improvement of 27.6% compared with that of the cells grown on the CSS. Such observation could be attributed to low edge-dislocation density and the increase in the light-absorption path by the scattering of interface incident light between the substrate and the epitaxial layer for the solar cell grown on the PSS.

Room temperature unpassivated InAs p-i-n photodetectors grown by molecular beam epitaxy

An unpassivated InAs p-i-n photodetector with excellent performance at room temperature was demonstrated. The zero-bias resistance area products of the diode with 720-nm thick i-layer are 8.1 /spl Omega/-cm/sup 2/ at room temperature and as high as 1.3 M /spl Omega/-cm/sup 2/ at 77 K. At 77 K, the diode exhibits a breakdown voltage exceeding 13 V. When tested under a 500 K blackbody source, the measured detectivity limited by Johnson noise is 1.2/spl times/10/sup 10/ cm-Hz/sup 1/2 //W at room temperature and 8.1/spl times/10/sup 11/ cm-Hz/sup 1/2 //W at 77 K. To our knowledge, this is the best data for a room temperature infrared detector.

Low Hysteresis Dispersion La2O3 AlGaN ∕ GaN MOS-HEMTs

AlGaN/GaN metal-oxide-semiconductor high electron mobility transistors (MOS-HEMTs) using electron-beam evaporated high-dielectric-constant (high-k) lanthanum oxide layer (La 2 O 3 ) as the gate insulator have been investigated and compared with the traditional GaN HEMTs. The dielectric constant of the La 2 O 3 insulator layer developed in this study was 13.1. In addition, a negligible hysteresis voltage shift in the capacitance-voltage curves can be obtained after high temperature annealing. The compositions and the crystalline structures of La 2 O 3 with different annealing temperatures were observed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray diffraction, respectively. The La 2 O 3 thin film achieved a good thermal stability after 200, 400, and 600°C postdeposition annealing owing to its high binding energy (835.7 eV) characteristics. Moreover, the gate leakage current of a traditional metal gate GaN HEMT can be suppressed for 1 order of magnitude after inserting a La 2 O 3 insulator between Ni and AlGaN, resulting in a better pulsed-mode operation. The device linearity was also improved due to its flat and wide transconductance (g m ) distribution, which was analyzed by a polynomial curve-fitting technique. Therefore, La 2 O 3 is a potential candidate high-k material for the gate insulator to enhance the GaN-based field effect transistor performance while scaling down the device dimension and device reliability at high power operation.

Inserting a p-InGaN layer before the p-AlGaN electron blocking layer suppresses efficiency droop in InGaN-based light-emitting diodes

In this study, we observed a dramatic decrease in the efficiency droop of InGaN/GaN light-emitting diodes after positioning a p-InGaN insertion layer before the p-AlGaN electron-blocking layer. The saturated external quantum efficiency of this device extended to 316 mA, with an efficiency droop of only 7% upon increasing the operating current to 1 A; in contrast, the corresponding conventional light-emitting diode suffered a severe efficiency droop of 42%. We suspect that the asymmetric carrier distribution was effectively mitigated as a result of an improvement in the hole injection rate and a suppression of electron overflow.

Enhanced Extraction and Efficiency of Blue Light-Emitting Diodes Prepared Using Two-Step-Etched Patterned Sapphire Substrates

Using a hot acid wet etching method, we have fabricated two types of patterned sapphire substrates: A pyramidal patterned sapphire substrate (PPSS) and a flat-top patterned sapphire substrate (FTPSS). After placing these samples into an atmospheric pressure metallorganic chemical vapor deposition system, we deposited standard InGaN light-emitting diode (LED) structures onto their surfaces. The crystal quality of these two surfaces was enhanced, as evidenced using X-ray diffraction (the full width at half-maximum decreased from 406.8 arcsec for the conventional sapphire to 356.4 and 349.2 arcsec for the PPSS and FTPSS samples, respectively). The output power of InGaN-based blue LEDs incorporating the PPSS and FTPSS improved to 17.9 and 18.7%, respectively, at 20 mA.