Demonstration of AlGaN-delta-GaN QW by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy for 260-nm ultraviolet light emitting diodes

III-nitride ultraviolet (UV) light emitting diodes (LEDs) with emission wavelengths in the range of 250-280 nm have attracted considerable interest for applications such as germicidal disinfection and biological detection. However, the widely-used AlGaN quantum well (QW)-based LEDs at such wavelengths suffer from low quantum efficiencies. One main factor that limits the AlGaN QW LED efficiency at ~250-280 nm is the suffering of the severe band mixing effect caused by the valence subbands crossover, as well as the Quantum Confined Stark Effect (QCSE). Therefore, the novel AlGaN-delta-GaN QW design was proposed to address these issues in order to realize high-efficiency deep-UV LEDs. Here, we proposed a novel Al_0.9Ga_0.1N-delta-GaN QW by inserting an ultra-thin delta-GaN layer into a conventional Al_0.9Ga_0.1N QW active region. The physics from such QW design was investigated by 6-band k·p model and the structure was experimentally demonstrated by Plasma-assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy (PAMBE). The calculated results show that the insertion of delta-GaN layer could successfully address the band mixing issue and QCSE, leading to a significant improvement in spontaneous emission rate as compared to that of Al_0.55Ga_0.45N QW at 260 nm. The 5-period Al_0.9Ga_0.1N-delta-GaN QW with 3-nm AlN barrier was grown on AlN/sapphire substrate by MBE with ~2-monolayer delta-GaN layer, which was evidenced by the cross-sectional transmission electron microscope. The two-photon photoluminescence spectrum presented a single peak emission centered at 260 nm from the grown Al_0.9Ga_0.1N-deltaGaN QW with a full width at half maximum of 12 nm, which shows that the demonstrated QW would be promising for high-efficiency UV LEDs.