With a promising prospect of light-emitting diodes as an attractive alternative to conventional light sources, remaining challenges still cannot be addressed owing to their limited efficiency. Among the continued scientific efforts, significant improvement on the emission efficiency has been achieved via either piezo-phototronic effect-based strain modulation or resonant excitation of plasmons in metallic nanostructures. Here, we present the investigation on the coupling process between piezo-phototronic effect and localized surface plasmonic resonance for enhancing the photoluminescence of InGaN/GaN quantum wells coated with Ag nanoparticles. The underlying physical mechanism of experimental results originates from tuning plasmonic resonance controlled by the shift of emission wavelength via piezo-phototronic effect, and it is further confirmed with the support of theoretical calculations. As a result, our research provides an approach to the integration of plasmonics with piezo-phototronic effect and brings widespread applications to high-efficiency artificial lighting, on-chip integrated plasmonic circuits, subwavelength optical communication, and micro-optoelectronic mechanical systems.
Keywords: InGaN/GaN quantum wells; light-emitting diodes; piezo-phototronic effect; plasmon resonance; strain engineering.