Investigating surface effects of GaN nanowires using confocal microscopy at below-band gap excitation

We analyze the microscopic origins of subgap photoexcitations of individual gallium nitride (GaN) triangular cross-section nanowires (NWs), which are highly photoactive over a broadband spectral range. Using confocal hyperspectral photoluminescence (PL) microscopy, mid-gap states on the NWs were excited using subgap illumination, resulting in two distinct PL spectra corresponding to the polar (0001) and the semipolar (1̅101)/(11̅01) surfaces. Emission spectra are well represented by Gaussian functions with fitted centers of 1.99 ± 0.01 eV and 2.26 ± 0.01 eV, respectively. PL collected from the end facets exhibits interference fringes and a relative blue shift. Furthermore, the PL spectrum shifts strongly to the blue when the excitation intensity is increased. These observations are consistent with a qualitative model in which the PL results from excitation into a broad manifold of surface-associated states which are rapidly populated at a high excitation intensity and can couple to etalon modes via longitudinal photon emission.