Competition between band gap and yellow luminescence in GaN and its relevance for optoelectronic devices

The competition between band gap and the 2.2 eV (yellow) luminescence of epitaxial GaN is studied for excitation densities ranging from 5×10−6 to 50 W/cm2. The ratio of the peak intensities of the band gap-to-yellow luminescence changes from 4:1 to 3000:1 as the excitation density is increased by 7 orders of magnitude. At room temperature, the band gap luminescence linewidth is 2.3kT, close to the theoretical minimum of 1.8kT. A model is developed describing the intensity of the two radiative transitions as a function of the excitation density. This model is based on bimolecular rate equations and takes into account shallow impurities, deep levels, and continuum states. The theoretically predicted dependences of the two different luminescence channels follow power laws with exponents of 1/2, 1 and 3/2. Thus the intensity of the yellow luminescence does not saturate at high excitation densities. These dependences are in excellent agreement with experimental results. The relevance of the results for optoelectronic GaN devices is discussed. It is shown that the peak intensity of the yellow luminescence line is negligibly small at typical injection currents of light-emitting diodes and lasers.