Mid-infrared electro-luminescence and absorption from AlGaN/GaN-based multi-quantum well inter-subband structures

We present electro-modulated absorption and electro-luminescence measurements on chirped AlGaN/GaN-based multi-quantum well inter-subband structures grown by metal-organic vapour phase epitaxy. The absorption signal is a TM-polarized, 70 meV wide feature centred at 230 meV. At medium injection current, a 58 meV wide luminescence peak corresponding to an inter-subband transition at 1450 cm−1 (180 meV) is observed. Under high injection current, we measured a 4 meV wide structure peaking at 92.5 meV in the luminescence spectrum. The energy location of this peak is exactly at the longitudinal optical phonon of GaN.