Direct Measurement of Nanoscale Lateral Carrier Diffusion: Toward Scanning Diffusion Microscopy

A multimode scanning near-field optical microscopy technique that allows the mapping of surface morphology, photoluminescence (PL) spectra in illumination and illumination-collection modes, and PL dynamics, all in one scan, has been developed along with a method to use it for evaluation of carrier diffusion. The method allows measuring diffusion lengths as small as ∼100 nm and their anisotropy and spatial distribution, parameters remaining inaccessible to conventional far-field techniques. The procedure has been applied to study ambipolar carrier diffusion in a nonpolar m -plane InGaN/GaN quantum well. The diffusion was found to be highly anisotropic with diffusion coefficients along and perpendicular to the wurtzite c axis equal to 0.4 and 1.9 cm 2 /s, respectively. The large diffusion anisotropy confirms band structure calculations that suggest that the topmost valence band in an m -plane InGaN quantum well is highly anisotropic.