Ion beam studies of multi-quantum wells of III-nitrides

III-Nitrides have attracted much attention due to their versatile and wide range of applications, such as blue/UV light emitting diodes. Strained layer super lattices offer extra degree of freedom to alter the band gap of lattice-mismatched heterostructures. Swift heavy ion irradiation is a post-growth technique to alter the band gap of semiconductors, spatially. In the present study, strained AlGaN/GaN multi-quantum wells (MQWs) were grown on sapphire with insertion of AlN and GaN as buffer layers between substrate and epilayers. Such grown AlGaN/GaN MQWs, AlGaN/GaN heterostructures and GaN layers were irradiated with 200 MeV Au and 150 MeV Ag ions at a fluence of 5 × 1011 ions/cm2 and 5 × 1012 ions/cm2 respectively. As-grown and irradiated samples have been characterized by high resolution XRD, photoluminescence and RBS/channelling. Measured strain values show that strain increases upon irradiation and the luminescence properties are enhanced. RBS/channelling confirms the increase in strain values upon irradiation. In this paper we describe the effects of swift heavy ion irradiation on structural and optical properties.