Near-field photoluminescence study of GaNAs alloy epilayer at room and cryogenic temperature

Abstract
We have measured the spatial distribution of the optical properties of a GaNAs (N∼0.8%) epilayer to investigate the carrier recombination mechanism at both room temperature and cryogenic temperature using a near-field scanning optical microscope. A difference between the macro and near-field photoluminescence (PL) spectra at room temperature was not observed. At low temperature, we found spatial inhomogeneity of the optical properties and sharp features in the near-field PL spectrum. These findings indicate that the dominant emission mechanism changes from recombination of delocalized carriers at room temperature to recombination of localized carriers (excitons) trapped in the local potential minimum due to compositional fluctuation at low temperature.