Electroluminescence is reported from dilute nitride InAsSbN/InAs multiquantum well light-emitting diodes grown using nitrogen plasma source molecular beam epitaxy. The diodes exhibited bright emission in the midinfrared peaking at 3.56？μm at room temperature. Emission occurred from a type I transition from electrons in the InAsSbN to confined heavy and light hole states in the QW. Analysis of the temperature- and current-dependent electroluminescence shows that thermally activated hole leakage and Auger recombination are the performance limiting factors in these devices. 1. Introduction There is increasing interest in the fabrication of mid-infrared optoelectronic devices for a range of applications including environmental pollution monitoring, remote sensing (LIDAR), infrared counter-measures, and free space optical communications. A number of different semiconductor materials and devices are currently being investigated including InSb/InAs quantum dots [1], bulk GaInAsSbP pentanary [2] and AlInSb alloys [3], InGaAsSb/AlGaInAsSb quantum wells (QWs) [4], and InAs/GaSb superlattices [5]. Recently we reported on bright room temperature electroluminescence from type II InAsSb/InAs multiquantum well (MQW) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) which produced a quasi-cw power of 12？μW corresponding to an internal quantum efficiency of 2.2% at a peak wavelength near 3.7？μm [6]. One way to improve the performance is to introduce nitrogen into the well. The introduction of a small amount of nitrogen reduces the bandgap without excess strain and can change the band alignment from type II to type I increasing the electron confinement and e-h wavefunction overlap. Furthermore dilute nitrides have the potential to reduce Auger recombination [7] and intervalence band absorption. To date there have been no reports of LEDs based on dilute nitride material in the mid-infrared spectral range (λ > 3？μm) due to the difficulty in growing epitaxial material of sufficient quality. Our previous work has concentrated on the development and optimisation of the growth of InAsSbN and from which photoluminescence (PL) was obtained up to 250？K from InAsSbN/InAs MQWs [8, 9]. It was found that the surfactant effect of Sb enhances the crystalline quality and PL intensity. Also the possibility to adjust the Sb and N contents in the material enables one to grow the material lattice matched to InAs or to tailor the strain in the QW. In this work we report bright room temperature electroluminescence at 3.56？μm from InAsSbN/InAs MQW LEDs and investigate the temperature and current dependencies of
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