Optical and magneto-optical properties of erbium doped InGaN and GaN epilayers

Abstract Using combined excitation–emission spectroscopy we have studied the erbium incorporation into GaN and InGaN for in situ doped MOCVD-grown layers and compared them to samples grown by MBE. A smaller up-conversion efficiency for the main site is observed compared to minority sites in the same sample as well as versus all sites from MBE grown samples. Furthermore, we show that the 1.54 μm emission efficiency is reduced with increasing In-content both under excitation above the bandgap in the UV as well as under resonant excitation at around 980 nm. This indicates that non-radiative decay channels for the Er ion are the largest contributing factor for this behavior. Finally, the Zeeman splitting of the excitation and emission lines of Er:GaN under application of magnetic fields up to 6.6 T with B||c-axis is shown.