Photoluminescence spectroscopy as a tool for quality control of GaN thin film to be used in solar cell devices

The use of III-V and semiconductor nitrides in solar cells has been of interest in the PV-community due to the wide variation range of the band gap in these materials. Particularly, the processing of hetero-junction structures of AlGaN/GaN and Si(p)/GaN(n) has been of great interest recently. In this work, the quality of GaN and InGaN thin films grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE) on different substrate and buffer layers has been studied by photoluminescence spectroscopy (PL). The PL measurements were processed as function of sample temperature. In the PL spectra it is possible to observe a strong near band-gap-edge emission and a broad blue, green and yellow luminescence (BL, GL, YL), which can be assigned to the presence of Ga and N vacancies, amorphous phases, deep level impurities and structural defects. The relative intensity between the different peaks of the bands related to defects or impurities were studied as a tool for quality control of the films.