Abstract-Efficient formation of excitons in a dense electron-hole plasma at room temperature

Andreas Hangleiter, Zuanming Jin, Marina Gerhard, Dimitry Kalincev, Torsten Langer, Heiko Bremers, Uwe Rossow, Martin Koch, Mischa Bonn, and Dmitry Turchinovich

https://journals.aps.org/prb/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevB.92.241305

Room-temperature electronic properties of semiconductors, especially in the case of higher charge densities, are commonly discussed in terms of single-particle excitations – free electrons and holes. Many-particle effects, such as the formation of excitons (Coulomb-bound electron-hole pairs), are usually seen as low-temperature and low-density phenomena. In this paper, using ultrafast terahertz and photoluminescence measurements, the authors find that under certain conditions typical for wide-band-gap semiconductors, the radiative excitons can be efficiently formed at high charge density and at room temperature. This effect is believed to contribute to the extraordinarily high quantum efficiency of group III nitride light emitters.

 

Commonly, excitons in semiconductors are regarded as a low-temperature, low carrier density phenomenon, becoming unstable as the temperature and carrier density increase. Contrary to the common expectation, our ultrafast conductivity and luminescence measurements in GaInN/GaN quantum wells reveal a highly efficient formation of radiative excitons from a high-density electron-hole plasma at room temperature, and provide a quantitative measure of the exciton fraction to reach more than 40% at a total carrier population as high as                                                                         

∼10cm−21013cm−2Driven by the mass action of electrons and holes, this effect is believed to contribute to the extraordinarily high quantum efficiency of group-III nitride light emitters.