Abstract
This paper reports quantum mechanical study to optimize the type-I AlN/GaN/InAlN QW (quantum well) heterostructure and investigates the optical gain characteristics. The heterostructure studied here has single QW of InAlN (similar to 10 nm well width) with barrier as GaN (similar to 20 nm width) and grown with the claddings of AlN binary semiconductor material (similar to 100 nm width). The optical gain spectra have been calculated by solving the 6 x 6 Luttinger-Kohn Hamiltonian considering the effective mass approximation. The optical characteristics of the designed QW heterostructure have been studied for the different well width of the QW heterostructure. For the InGaN/GaN QW heterostructure, by reducing the well width, the peak gain has been improved with blue shift in wavelength, which can be considered as significant increase in the peak gain. This study may be advantageous in designing the tunable III-nitride optoelectronic devices.