Partial strain relaxation effects on polarization anisotropy of semipolar ( 11 2 2 )

InGaN/GaN quantum well structures

Seoung-Hwan Park, Dhaneshwar Mishra, Y. Eugene Pak, Chang Young Park, Seung-Hyun Yoo, Yong-Hee Cho
, Mun-Bo Shim, Sangheum Hwang, and Sungjin Kim
Citation: Applied Physics Letters 103, 221108 (2013); doi: 10.1063/1.4833277
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4833277
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APPLIED PHYSICS LETTERS 103, 221108 (2013)

Partial strain relaxation effects on polarization anisotropy of semipolar

 InGaN/GaN quantum well structures
1122
Seoung-Hwan Park,1,a) Dhaneshwar Mishra,2 Y. Eugene Pak,2 Chang Young Park,3
Seung-Hyun Yoo,3 Yong-Hee Cho,4 Mun-Bo Shim,4 Sangheum Hwang,4 and Sungjin Kim4

1
Department of Electronics Engineering, Catholic University of Daegu, Hayang, Kyeongbuk 712-702,
South Korea
2
Advanced Institutes of Convergence Technology, Seoul National University, Suwon, South Korea
3
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Ajou University, Suwon, South Korea
4
Computational Science Group, CAS Center, SAIT, Samsung Electronics, Yongin-si, Kyunggi-do 446-712,
South Korea

(Received 12 September 2013; accepted 10 November 2013; published online 26 November 2013)
 InGaN/GaN
Partial strain relaxation effects on polarization anisotropy of semipolar (1122)
quantum well (QW) structures were investigated using the multiband effective-mass theory. In the
case of strain relaxation of x0 x0 along x0 -axis, the polarization ratio gradually decreases with
increasing strain relaxation. Also, with the strain relaxation by the same amount, the variation of
the polarization ratio along x0 -axis is shown to be much larger than that along y0 -axis. However, the
polarization switching is not observed even at a high In composition of 0.4 due to a small strain
component (0x0 x0 ) with no strain relaxation. On the other hand, in the case of strain relaxation of y0 y0
along y0 -axis, the polarization switching is observed, and the optical anisotropy is found to change
from positive to negative with increasing strain relaxation. Also, the absolute value of the
polarization ratio gradually decreases with increasing carrier density. However, the polarization
switching due to the carrier density is not observed. Thus, the polarization switching observed
at high carrier density may be attributed to inhomogeneous strain distribution in the InGaN layer.
C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4833277]
V

The wide band-gap wurtzite (WZ) semiconductors have

attracted considerable attention due to their potential applications for optoelectronic devices in blue and ultraviolet (UV)
regions.1 In particular, nonpolar and semipolar orientations
of group III-Nitrides have attracted considerable attention
for realizing high-efficiency light-emitting diodes (LEDs)
and laser diodes (LDs).24 These quantum well (QW) structures are interesting because the internal field is expected to
be reduced compared to those with the (0001) crystal orientation, and there exists a giant polarization ratio in the optical
matrix elements.59 Among them, the semipolar (1122)
plane is of special interest because high efficiency green
and yellow LEDs have already been demonstrated on this
plane.10,11 However, many fundamental properties of
InGaN-based QW structures with (1122) crystal orientation
are not yet well understood.
Recently, Tyagi et al.12 showed that, due to the large lattice mismatch between InN and GaN (11%), partial strain
relaxation is observed in heteroepitaxially grown InGaN
layers on free-standing semipolar (1122) GaN substrates. In
addition, the strain component along [1 123] was found to experience a higher degree of relaxation through the formation
of high-density dislocations facilitated by the existence of
glide planes (c-plane) and the presence of shear strain. This
means that the understanding of physical mechanisms related
to partial strain relaxation of the light emission will be important for the design of the active region. However, despite
its importance, there has been very little work on partial

strain relaxation effects on electronic and optical properties

of semipolar (1122) InGaN/GaN QW structures.
In this paper, we theoretically investigate partial strain
relaxation effects on polarization anisotropy of semipolar
(1122) InGaN/GaN QW structures using the multiband
effective-mass theory. Here, we consider the free carrier
model with the band-gap renormalization. We consider an
InGaN/GaN QW structure with compressively strained
InGaN wells and unstrained GaN barriers assuming that the
QW structure is grown on a thick (1122) GaN substrate
layer. The valence-band structure for the (1122) crystal orientation is calculated by using a 6  6 Hamiltonian based on
the k  p method.2
The Hamiltonian for an arbitrary crystal orientation can
be obtained using a rotation matrix
0
1
cos h cos / cos h sin / sin h
U @ sin /
cos /
0 A:
(1)
sin h cos / sin h sin / cos h
Rotations of the Euler angles h and / transform the physical
quantities from x; y; z coordinates to x0 ; y0 ; z0 coordinates.
The z-axis corresponds to the c-axis [0001], and the growth
axis (defined as the z0 -axis) is normal to the QW plane hkil.
The relation between the coordinate systems for vectors and
tensors is expressed as

0ij Uia Ujb ab ;

C0ijkl

a)

Electronic mail: shpark@cu.ac.kr

0003-6951/2013/103(22)/221108/5/$30.00

k0i Uia ka ;

103, 221108-1

(2)

Uia Ujb Ukc Uld Cabcd ;

C 2013 AIP Publishing LLC
V

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221108-2

Park et al.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 221108 (2013)

where summation over repeated indices is implicit. Then, we

obtain a 6  6 Hamiltonian for the (1122) orientation by
using the transformation relation with h 56 and
/ 0.13,14
The spontaneous emission coefficient including the
effects of anisotropy on the valence band dispersion is given
by15,16
!
r
1
2p
2k0jj
lo
e2
0
2
gsp x
d/
dk
0
jj

m2o x 0
2p2 Lw
0
 j^
e 0  M0lm k0jj ; /0 j2 flc k0jj ; /0 1  fmv k0jj ; /0
 ReLx; k0jj ; /0 ;

(3)

where x is the angular frequency, lo is the vacuum permeability,  is the dielectric constant, e is the charge of an electron, mo is the free electron mass, /0 is the angle between kx0
and ky0 wavevectors, k0jj is the magnitude of the in-plane
wave vector in the QW plane, Lw is the well width, ^e 0 is a
unit vector in the direction of the optical electric field, jM0lm j2
is the momentum matrix element in the strained QW, and flc
and fmv are the Fermi functions for occupation probability by
the electrons in the conduction subband states and the valence subband states, respectively. The indices l and m
denote the electron states in conduction subband and heavy
hole (light hole) subband states, respectively. Also,
hx; /0 Ecl k0jj ; /0  Evm k0jj ; /0 Eg DESX
Elm k0jj ; 
hx is the renormalized transition energy between
DECH  
electrons and holes, where Eg is the band gap of the material,
and DESX and DECH are the screened exchange and the
Coulomb-hole contributions17,18 to the band-gap renormalization, respectively. Here, h is the Planck constant. The lineshape function is Gaussian for the simplest non-Markovian
quantum kinetics and is given in Refs. 15 and 16.
The spontaneous emission rate rspon can be obtained
from our calculated spontaneous emission spectrum gsp by
using
rspon E

4n2
gsp E;
hk2

(4)

where n is the refractive index of the quantum well and E

2pch=k with c being the speed of light. The material parameters for GaN and InN used in the calculation were taken
from Ref. 19 and references therein, except for band-gap.
The band-gap expression was obtained from Ref. 20. The parameters for InxGa1xN were obtained from the linear combination between the parameters of GaN and InN except for
the band-gap.
Figure 1 shows spontaneous emission rate for x0 - and
0
y -polarizations of the (1122)-oriented InxGa1xN/GaN QW
structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm) with strain relaxation of
x0 x0 =0x0 x0 along [1 123] (x0 -axis) of (a) 1.0, (b) 0.6, and (c)
0.2. Spontaneous emission rate are calculated at the carrier
density of 2  1019 cm3 . Here, strain component x0 x0 was
normalized with 0x0 x0 , which is a strain component with no
strain relaxation. Thus, x0 x0 =0x0 x0 1:0 means no strain
relaxation. The inset shows the polarization ratio as a function of x0 x0 =0x0 x0 . The polarization ratio q is defined as
Iy0  Ix0 =Iy0 Ix0 , where I is the peak intensity of spontaneous emission spectra for x0 - and y0 -polarizations, respectively. The y0 -polarized spontaneous emission rate is nearly
invariant with increasing strain relaxation, i.e., with decreasing x0 x0 =0x0 x0 . On the other hand, in the case of the x0 -polarization, the spontaneous emission rate is shown to increase
gradually with increasing strain relaxation. As a result, the
polarization ratio gradually decreases with decreasing
x0 x0 =0x0 x0 . However, the polarization switching changing
from y0 - to x0 -polarization is not observed even at a high In
composition of 0.4.
Figure 2 shows the polarization ratio as functions of (a)
strain relaxation of y0 y0 =0y0 y0 along [1100] (y0 -axis) with several strain relaxation x0 x0 =0x0 x0 and (b) absolute value of strain
relaxation (jx0 x0  0x0 x0 j or jy0 y0  0y0 y0 j) for the (1122)-oriented InxGa1xN/GaN QW structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm).
Here, strain component y0 y0 was normalized with 0y0 y0 ,
which is a strain component with no strain relaxation.
Theoretical results are calculated at the carrier density of
2  1019 cm3 . We know that the sign of the optical anisotropy changes from positive to negative with decreasing
y0 y0 =0y0 y0 , i.e., with increasing strain relaxation. These results

FIG. 1. Spontaneous emission rate for

22)x0 - and y0 -polarizations of the (11
oriented InxGa1-xN/GaN QW structures
(x 0.4, Lw 3 nm) with strain relaxa1
123] (x0 -axis) of
tion x0 x0 =0x0 x0 along [
(a) 1.0, (b) 0.6, and (c) 0.2. Here, strain
component x0 x0 was normalized with
0x0 x0 , which is strain component with
no strain relaxation.

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221108-3

Park et al.

FIG. 2. Polarization ratio as functions of (a) strain relaxation of y0 y0 =0y0 y0

along [1100] (y0 -axis) with several strain relaxation x0 x0 =0x0 x0 and (b) abso22)lute value of strain relaxation (jx0 x0  0x0 x0 j or jy0 y0  0y0 y0 j) for the (11
oriented InxGa1-xN/GaN QW structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm).

are in good agreement with those reported by Yan et al.21 A

critical value of y0 y0 =0y0 y0 for a polarization switching is
shown to be about 0.7. Also, we know that it is nearly independent of x0 x0 =0x0 x0 because the value of 0x0 x0 is relatively
much smaller than that of 0y0 y0 . For example, 0x0 x0 and 0y0 y0 are
0.52% and 4.09%, respectively. However, the variation of
the optical anisotropy by strain relaxation along x0 -axis is
shown to be much larger than that along y0 -axis when the
strain is changed by the same amount.
So far, two kinds of polarization switchings have been
reported: One is the polarization switching changing from
y0 - to x0 -polarization with increasing In composition (>0.3)
under low excitation power.22,23 Another is the polarization
switching changing from x0 - to y0 -polarization with increasing excitation power for the QW structure with high In composition (>0.3). Some groups proposed very large values of
the deformation potential D6 (8.8, 7.1, and 5.5 eV) to
explain polarization switching.22,24,25 However, recent
first-principles calculations and experimental measurements
showed much smaller D6 values of 3.95 and 3.02 eV,

Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 221108 (2013)

respectively.21,26 Using these values, the polarization switching was not observed for bulk InGaN under the homogeneous strain. On the other hand, Yan et al.21 and Roberts
et al.27 suggested that partial strain relaxation is a cause of
polarization switching of semipolar InGaN grown on GaN
substrates because partial strain relaxation has been observed
in semipolar InGaN samples.12 Our present results also show
that the polarization switching is observed for the partial
strain relaxation of y0 y0 =0y0 y0 .
In the case of the polarization switching with increasing
carrier density, Sizov et al.28 and Kojima et al.29 proposed
the carrier population in inhomogeneous QW states due to
varying indium concentrations as its origin. They assumed
that the light emission at local regions with higher In composition is dominant by x0 -polarization, which is related to the
large values of the deformation potential. Also, Yan et al.21
suggested that details of the band structure away from the
zone center, along with band-filling effects, may play a role
in the observed polarization switching. Here, we investigate
a band-filling effect at a high carrier density on optical anisotropy for the QW structure with q < 0.
Figure 3 shows spontaneous emission rate for x0 - and y0 polarizations for the (1122)-oriented InxGa1xN/GaN QW
structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm) with carrier densities of (a) 2,
(b) 3, and (c) 4  1019 cm3 . Here, we assumed x0 x0 =0x0 x0
0:2 and y0 y0 =0y0 y0 0:6. In the case of a relatively low carrier density of 2  1019 cm3 , the x0 -polarized light emission
is shown to be much dominant, compared to the y0 -polarized
light emission. Also, the light emission for both x0 - and
y0 -polarizations increases with increasing carrier density,
mainly due to the increase in the matrix element and the
quasi-Fermi level separation. However, the increasing rate of
the y0 -polarized light emission is observed to be larger than
that of the x0 -polarized light emission. Thus, the polarization
ratio gradually decreases with increasing carrier density.
This is related to the optical matrix element away from the
zone center, as discussed below.
Figure 4 shows (a) polarization ratio as a function of the
carrier density and (b) x0 - and y0 -polarized matrix elements
for the C1-V1 transition for the (11
22)-oriented
InxGa1-xN/GaN QW structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm). Here,

FIG. 3. Spontaneous emission rate for

22)x0 - and y0 -polarizations for the (11
oriented InxGa1xN/GaN QW structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm) with carrier
densities of (a) 2, (b) 3, and (c)
4  1019 cm3 . Here, we assumed
x0 x0 =0x0 x0 0:2 and y0 y0 =0y0 y0 0:6.

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221108-4

Park et al.

FIG. 4. (a) Polarization ratio as a function of the carrier density and (b) x0 22)-oriand y0 -polarized matrix elements for the C1-V1 transition for the (11
ented InxGa1xN/GaN QW structures (x 0.4, Lw 3 nm). Here, we
assumed x0 x0 =0x0 x0 0:2 and y0 y0 =0y0 y0 0:6.

we assumed x0 x0 =0x0 x0 0:2 and y0 y0 =0y0 y0 0:6. The notation
kjj means that the optical matrix elements were averaged in
kx0 -ky0 QW plane. The x0 -polarized optical matrix element at
the band-edge (kjj 0) is shown to be much larger than the
y0 -polarized optical matrix element. In the case of a relatively low carrier density, carriers will occupy states at
band-edge in the conduction and valence bands. Thus, the
x0 -polarized spontaneous emission rate is much larger than
the y0 -polarized spontaneous emission rate. However, in the
case of a relatively high carrier density, carriers will occupy
higher states above kjj 0 in the conduction and valence
bands. Thus, the light emission characteristics will be
affected by matrix elements away from kjj 0. As a result,
the x0 -polarized matrix element rapidly decreases with
increasing kjj while the y0 -polarized matrix element rapidly
increases. Also, the increasing rate of the y0 -polarized spontaneous emission rate is larger than that of the x0 -polarized
spontaneous emission rate. Hence, the absolute value of the
polarization ratio gradually decreases with increasing carrier
density. However, the polarization switching due to the carrier density is not observed. Here, we note that, in the case of
the optical gain, there are four matrix elements (one TE/TM
pair and one extraordinary/ordinary polarized pair) because
of the birefringence of (1122) InGaN/GaN QW structure.25,31 Thus, this fact should be considered in treating the
polarization change by the carrier density of the optical gain.
Thus, the polarization switching with increasing carrier
density may be attributed to inhomogeneous strain distribution in the InGaN layer, especially at high In compositions.
For example, recent experimental results showed that the
strain in (11
22) InGaN films is partially relaxed via dislocations.12,30 In this case, the strain relaxation induces fluctuations of the valence-subband separation as a function of
position, as proposed by Roberts et al.27 The low energy part
of the bandtail of the reduced density of states in the regime
of x0 -polarization (for example, y0 y0 =0y0 y0 < 0:7 in Fig. 2) and
the high energy part with higher density of states owns y0 polarization. With this condition, the optical polarization
switching would occur with increasing excitation as consequence of the gradual filling of bandtail states. More theoretical and experimental works will be needed to clarify this
issue.

Appl. Phys. Lett. 103, 221108 (2013)

In summary, partial strain relaxation effects on polarization anisotropy of semipolar (1122) InGaN/GaN QW structures were investigated using the multiband effective-mass
theory. The polarization ratio gradually decreases with
increasing strain relaxation of x0 x0 . Also, with the strain
relaxation by the same amount, the variation of the polarization ratio along x0 -axis is shown to be much larger than that
along y0 -axis. However, the polarization switching is not
observed even at a high In composition of 0.4 due to a small
strain component (0x0 x0 0:52) with no strain relaxation. On
the other hand, the sign of the optical anisotropy changes
from positive to negative with decreasing y0 y0 =0y0 y0 , i.e., with
increasing strain relaxation. Hence, the polarization switching at higher In composition may be related to the strain
relaxation along y0 -axis. The absolute value of the polarization ratio gradually decreases with increasing carrier density.
However, the polarization switching due to the carrier density is not observed. As a result, the polarization switching
with increasing carrier density may be attributed to inhomogeneous strain distribution in the InGaN layer due to the process such as the relaxation through dislocations, especially at
high In compositions.
This work was supported by the Samsung Advanced
Institute of Technology in Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
under the Technology Collaboration program.

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