III-Nitride Quantum Devices—Microphotonics

Photonic devices based on III-nitrides offer benefits such as UV/blue emission, large band offsets of InN/GaN/AlN heterostructures allowing novel quantum well (QW) device design, and inherently high-emission efficiencies. Furthermore, due to their mechanical hardness and larger band gaps (when compared with conventional semiconductor devices), III-nitride-based devices may operate at much higher temperatures and voltages/power levels for any dimensional configuration and in harsher environments than other semiconductor devices and are expected to provide much lower temperature sensitivities. These are crucial advantages for many applications. Over the last decade, the physics of microsize photonic devices has been investigated. New physical phenomena and properties are expected to dominate as the device size scales down. The microsize light emitters offer benefits over edge emitters such as the ability to create arrays of individually controllable pixels on a single chip, enhanced quantum efficiency, and greatly reduced lasing threshold. Rapid progress in the area of III-nitride microphotonics has been made. The growth and fabrication of micron and submicron size photonic structures based on III-nitride wide bandgap semiconductors has been achieved, and the technology has made it possible to integrate arrays of optical elements to form active photonic-integrated devices. One example is an interconnected µ-LED with enhanced emission efficiency over the conventional LEDs for the same device area. Another example is a µ-LED array with independently addressed pixels or III-nitride microdisplay. III-nitride microdisplay may offer performance that is superior to microdisplays fabricated from liquid crystals and organic LEDs. The third example presented is III-nitride UV Focal Plane Arrays (UV-FPA) of detectors. So far, the operation of AlGaN UV-FPA with size up to 256×256 pixels with 30×30?μm² unit cells has been demonstrated. Together with the nature of their two-dimensional array, these active micro-photonic devices show promise in many important applications, such as optical communications, signal and image processing, optical interconnects, computing, enhanced energy conversion and storage, chemical, biohazard substances, and disease detection, missile and shellfire, atmospheric ozone-level, and flame sensing. III-nitride microlens arrays have been fabricated successfully for blue and UV wavelength applications on GaN and AlN. The successful fabrication of microlens arrays based on III-nitride materials opens the possibility for monolithically integrating nitride-based micro-size photonic devices, as well as coupling light into, out of, and between arrays of III-nitride emitters and detectors, especially for short wavelengths covering the green-blue to deep UV (200?nm) region. Nanofabrication and characterization of photonic crystals with diameter/periodicity as small as 100/180?nm on InGaN/GaN MQW has been achieved. An unprecedented maximum enhancement factor of 20 was obtained under optical pumping. Single-mode ridged optical waveguide devices using GaN/AlGaN heterostructures have been designed, fabricated, and characterized for operation in 1550?nm wavelength window. The feasibility of developing novel photonic integrated circuits based on III-nitride wide bandgap semiconductors for fiber-optical communications has been investigated.