Author(s)

Guillermo Santana-Rodríguez, Adolfo Mejía-Montero, Betsabeé Marel Monroy-Peláez, Máximo López-López, Yenny Lucero Casallas-Moreno, Manolo Ramírez-López, Gerardo Contreras-Puente, Osvaldo de Melo-Pereira

Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados-IPN, México City, México.
Escuela Superior de Física y Matemáticas-Instituto Politécnico Nacional, México City, México.
Facultad de Física-Universidad de la Habana, Habana City, Cuba.
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México.
Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, México City, México; Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados-IPN, México City, México.

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 InGaN/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 and pump power. 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 was studied as a tool for quality control of the films.

Photoluminescence, Gallium Nitride, Solar Cells

Santana-Rodríguez, G. , Mejía-Montero, A. , Monroy-Peláez, B. , López-López, M. , Casallas-Moreno, Y. , Ramírez-López, M. , Contreras-Puente, G. and Melo-Pereira, O. (2014) Photoluminescence Spectroscopy as a Tool for Quality Control of GaN Thin Film to Be Used in Solar Cell Devices. Materials Sciences and Applications, 5, 267-270. doi: 10.4236/msa.2014.55031.