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Efficient high-power operation of light emitting diodes based on InGaN quantum wells (QWs) requires rapid interwell hole transport and low nonradiative recombination. The transport rate can be increased by replacing GaN barriers with that of InGaN. Introduction of InGaN barriers, however, increases the rate of the nonradiative recombination. In this work, we have attempted to reduce the negative impact of the nonradiative recombination by introducing thin GaN or AlGaN interlayers at the QW/barrier interfaces. The interlayers, indeed, reduce the nonradiative recombination rate and increase the internal quantum efficiency by about 10%. Furthermore, the interlayers do not substantially slow down the interwell hole transport; for 0.5 nm Al0.10Ga0.90N interlayers the transport rate has even been found to increase. Another positive feature of the interlayers is narrowing of the QW PL linewidth, which is attributed to smoother QW interfaces and reduced fluctuations of the QW width. 

Time-resolved and quasi-cw photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy was applied to measure the internal quantum efficiency (IQE) of c-plane InGaN single quantum wells (QWs) grown on sapphire substrates using metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. The identical temperature dependence of the PL decay times and radiative recombination times at low temperatures confirmed that the low temperature IQE is 100%, which allowed evaluation of the absolute IQE at elevated temperatures. At 300 K, the IQE for QWs emitting in green and green–yellow spectral regions was more than 60%. The weak nonradiative recombination in QWs with a substantial concentration of threading dislocations and V-defects (∼2 × 108 cm−2) shows that these extended defects do not notably affect the carrier recombination. 

Scanning tunneling electroluminescence (STL) microscopy is performed on a 3 nm‐thick InGaN/GaN quantum well (QW) with [In] = 0.23 such that the main light emission occurs in the green. The technique is used to map the radiative recombination properties at a scale of a few nanometers and correlate the local electroluminescence map with the surface topography simultaneously imaged by scanning tunneling microscopy. While the expected green emission is observed all over the sample, measurements performed on a 500 nm × 500 nm area around a 150 nm‐large and 2.5 nm‐deep hexagonal defect reveal intense emission peaks at higher energies close to the defect edges, features which are not visible in the macrophotoluminescence spectrum of the sample. Via a fitting of the local tunneling electroluminescence spectra, quantitative information on the fluctuations of the intensity, peak energy, width, and phonon replica intensity of the different spectral contributions is obtained, which provides information on carrier localization in the QW. This procedure also indicates that the carrier diffusion length on the probed area of the QW is shorter than 50 nm.