Abstract: | Colorless transparent prismatic crystals (0.5‐2.0 mm long) and hopper crystals (1.0‐2.5 mm long) of GaN were prepared by heating a Ga melt at 800°C in Na vapor under N2 pressures of 7.0 MPa for 300 h. The photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of a prismatic crystal at 4 K showed the emission peaks of neutral donor‐bound exciton (D0‐X) and free exciton (XA) at 3.472 eV and 3.478 eV, respectively, in the near band edge region. The full‐width at half‐maximum (FWHM) of (D0‐X) peak was 1.9 meV. The emission peaks of a donor–acceptor pair transition (D0‐A0) and its phonon replicas were observed in a lower energy range (2.9‐3.3 eV). The emission peaks of the D0‐A0 and phonon replicas were also observed in the cathodoluminescence (CL) spectrum at 20 K. The (D0‐X) PL peak of a hopper crystal at 4 K was at 3.474 eV (2.1 meV higher), having a FWHM of 6.1 meV which was over 3 times larger than that of the prismatic crystal. A strong broad band with a maximum intensity around 1.96 eV was observed for the hopper crystals in the CL spectrum at room temperature. (© 2007 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim) |