Strong influence of SiO2 thin film on properties of GaN epilayers

In this letter, we report strong degradation of photoluminescence (PL) performance of GaN epilayers due to SiO2 layers that were deposited on GaN surfaces by electron-beam evaporation. Secondary ion mass spectrometry measurements show that the oxygen concentration of GaN with SiO2 layers is one order of magnitude more than that of as-grown GaN. This fact indicates that oxygen can very easily replace nitrogen in GaN. It was also found that rapid thermal processing can recover and improve the optical quality of GaN with SiO2 layer. As a reference, SixNy was found to have little effect on PL performance of GaN.