Light Emission Characteristics of Nonpolar a-Plane GaN-Based Photonic Crystal Defect Cavities

In this paper, the light emission performance from nonpolar a-plane gallium nitride (GaN)-based photonic crystal (PC) slabs with line-type defect cavities has been investigated. Via the focused ion beam milling technique, thin membrane structures of the nonpolar GaN PC defect cavities were engineered, exhibiting one dominated resonant mode occurred at 419.3 nm with a high quality factor of 1.9 × 10 3 in the photoluminescence emission characterizations. In the farfield region, light emission performance shows a high polarization degree of 50% with the beam direction perpendicular to the defect cavity. Compared with the PC defect cavity patterns fabricated on c-axial oriented GaN materials, the a-plane PC defect cavities display not only the linear light output-input power dependence, but also an invariant resonant mode of constant light emission behavior with increasing the injection carriers, therefore providing a new perspective for the future development of promising optoelectronic devices.