Strong suppression of In desorption from InGaN QW by improved technology of upper InGaN/GaN QW interface

•Desorption of In was suppressed by eliminating growth interruption after QW growth.•The In content in InGaN QWs increased three times by this method.•QW PL was enhanced although In content was increased.•The defect luminescence was suppressed by continuous growth of barriers after QW.•The origin of defect band luminescence is suggested. The aim of this work is to elucidate how different growth mode and composition of barriers can influence the QW properties and their PL and to find optimal QW capping process, to suppress the In desorption from QWs and to maintain the QW PL efficiency. It concentrates on the technology procedure for growth of upper quantum well (QW) interfaces in InGaN/GaN QW structure when different temperature for QW and barrier epitaxy is used. We have found that optimal photoluminescence (PL) results were achieved, when the growth after QW formation was not interrupted, but immediately continued during the temperature ramp by the growth of (In)GaN capping layer with small introduction of In precursor into the reactor. Optimal barrier between QW with respect to PL results was found to be pure GaN. We have shown according to SIMS and HRTEM results that by this technological procedure the InGaN desorption was considerably suppressed and three times higher In concentration and two times thicker QWs were achieved for the same QW growth parameters without deterioration of PL intensity in comparison to sample with usually used thin GaN low temperature capping protection. Additionally, for samples covered by the QW capping layer during the temperature ramp the defect band is almost completely missing, thus we can conclude that this defect band is connected with quality of the upper QW interface.