Choice of crystal plane for InGaN opto-electonics applications
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By Michigan Tech's Open Sustainability Technology Lab.
Wanted: Students to make a distributed future with solar-powered open-source 3-D printing. |
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| This is in a series of literature reviews on InGaN solar cells, which supported the comprehensive review by D.V.P. McLaughlin & J.M. Pearce, "Progress in Indium Gallium Nitride Materials for Solar Photovoltaic Energy Conversion"Metallurgical and Materials Transactions A 44(4) pp. 1947-1954 (2013). open access Others: InGaN solar cells| InGaN PV| InGaN materials| InGan LEDs| Nanocolumns and nanowires| Optical modeling of thin film microstructure| Misc. |
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This page describes many potential applications of using [math][11\bar{2}2][/math] plane for InGaN based PV, LED, LASER diodes and other applications. Its important to know that role of crystal orientation plays a vital role is determining the overall properties and behavior of electronic structure especially when the material is polar/ piezoelectric material like ZnO, GaN, InGaN etc.
Some of interesting properties of InGaN [math][11\bar{2}2][/math] plane are as following.
- Semi polar plane: [plane such as [0001] are highly polar, whereas plane such as [math][10\bar{1}0][/math] are non polar. Highly polar planes have disadvantage of large number of recombination states caused by stain in the crystal, whereas non polar lane are having large number of non-radiative recombination centers. Semipolar planes, as the name suggest have the polarization effects in between those of highly polar planes and non-polar plane. This property can be utilize to optimize the internal quantum efficiency of electronic devices based on InGaN/ GaN materials.
- Their is a large reduction in recombination centers which is the main cause of poor efficiency.
- Significant reduction in threading dislocations, as they mostly grow in [0001] plane and bent by 90 degree in [math][11\bar{2}0][/math] plane.
- most optimized efficiency can be achieved by utilizing these planes as they reduce the number of TDs and recombination centers.
- Higher In Incorporation is possible for the same growth conditions as compared to [0001] plane.
- Almost twice internal quantum efficiency can be achieved by using [math][11\bar{2}2][/math] plane.
