Influence of initial growth pressure on the optical properties of Si-doped nonpolar a-plane GaN grown with different doping levels

The effect of crystalline quality of undoped a-plane GaN buffer layers on the properties of Si-doped GaN layers grown with different doping levels was investigated. The dominant photoluminescence (PL) emission at about 3.42eV (D1 band) for all Si-doped GaN samples was associated with excitons bound to basal stacking faults (BSFs). The intensity ratio of the D1 band to near band edge (NBE) emission was reduced with increasing doping concentration, associated with the decrease in the density of BSFs. Interestingly, it was also found that the intensity of the DAP–longitudinal optical (LO) phonon replica exceeded the DAP emission above 50K, which might be related to the structural defect-related emission in Si-doped a-plane GaN samples. ► Initial growth pressure for the nucleation layer vs. crystalline quality. ► Intensity ratio of emission band at (3.42eV) to near band edge (NBE) emission. ► Doping concentration vs. density of basal stacking faults (BSFs). ► Structural defect-related emission in Si-doped a-plane GaN samples.