Photoluminescence properties of praseodymium ions implanted into submicron regions in gallium nitride

Lanthanoid-doped Gallium Nitride (GaN) semiconductors are a promising class of materials with the potential to be used across a range of novel quantum optelectronic all-locations including room temperature single photon sources. However, to date there is relatively little understood about the properties of small lanthanoid ensembles, which is required before this class of materials can reach their full potential. This paper reports room temperature optical properties of submicron extent implanted-Praseodymium (Pr) in GaN. Thermal annealing at 1200 °C is conducted for the Pr implanted GaN using SiN cap technique to activate implanted-Pr as luminescent centers. The photoluminescence shows two main peaks at 650.3 and 652.0 nm originating from the 3 P 0 → 3 F 2 transition in 4f-shell of Pr3+. We explore the saturation behavior of the photoluminescence intensity. The implanted-Pr activation ratio in a 100 nm × 100 nm region is estimated to be 1.7% in the case of 532 nm excitation.