Room-temperature stability of excitons and transverse-electric polarized deep-ultraviolet luminescence in atomically thin GaN quantum wells

Abstract: Quantum confinement profoundly affects the properties and interactions of electrons, holes, and excitons in nanomaterials. We apply first-principles calculations to study the effects of extreme quantum confinement on the electronic, excitonic, and radiative properties of atomically thin GaN quantum wells with a thickness of 1 to 4 atomic monolayers embedded in AlN. We determine the quasiparticle band gaps, exciton energies and wave functions, radiative lifetimes, and Mott critical densities as a function of well and barrier thickness. Our results show that quantum confinement in GaN monolayers increases the band gap up to 5.44 eV and the exciton binding energy up 215 meV, indicating the thermal stability of excitons at room temperature. Exciton radiative lifetimes range from 1 to 3 nanoseconds at room temperature, while the Mott critical density for exciton dissociation is approximately 10$^{13}$ cm$^{-2}$. The luminescence is transverse-electric polarized, which facilitates light extraction from c-plane heterostructures. We also introduce a simple approximate model for calculating the exciton radiative lifetime based on the free-carrier bimolecular radiative recombination coefficient and the exciton radius, which agrees well with our results obtained with the Bethe-Salpeter equation predictions. Our results demonstrate that atomically thin GaN quantum wells exhibit stable excitons at room temperature for potential applications in efficient light emitters in the deep ultraviolet, as well as room-temperature excitonic devices.