On the origin of blue emission from As-doped GaN

As-doped GaN films have been grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy and their properties investigated using atomic force microscopy, X-ray diffraction and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The structural properties of the As-doped GaN films improve with increasing sample thickness. The room temperature PL is dominated by a strong blue emission band, exhibiting multiple peaks centered at 2.6 eV. The number of peaks increases monotonically with sample thickness. From this we conclude that the multiple peaks in the blue emission band of As-doped GaN samples arise mainly from optical interference effects. However, the possibility of several transitions involving As being responsible for the blue emission process cannot be excluded.