Near infrared electroluminescence of ZnMgO/InN core–shell nanorod heterostructures grown on Si substrate

This paper presents a systematic investigation of a ZnMgO/InN core–shell nanorods heterojunction device on a p-Si substrate. Here we demonstrated the heteroepitaxial growth of the well-aligned ZnMgO/InN core–shell nanorods structure, which enabled an increased heterojunction area to improve the carrier injection efficiency of nanodevices by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy combined with metal–organic chemical vapor deposition. In situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurements were performed on the ZnMgO nanorods, the interface of ZnMgO/InN and the InN core–shell nanorods to fully understand the structure and working mechanism of the heterojunction device. The current transport mechanism has been discussed in terms of the characteristics of current–voltage and the energy band diagram of the n-InN/ZnMgO/p-Si heterojunction. At a low forward voltage, the current transport followed the dependence of I ∼ V1.47, which was attributed to the deep-level assisted tunneling. When the forward voltage was larger than 10 V, the current followed the relation of I ∼ V2 because of the radiative recombination process. In accordance with the above conclusion, the near-infrared electroluminescence of the diode could be observed after the forward bias voltage up to 11.6 V at room temperature. In addition, the size quantization effect and the intrinsic electron accumulation of the InN core–shell nanorods were investigated to explain the blueshift and broadened bandwidth. Furthermore, the light output power of about 0.6 microwatt at a fixed wavelength of 1500 nm indicated that our study will further provide a useful route for realizing the near-infrared electroluminescence of InN on Si substrate.