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Thermal analysis of GaN-based photonic membranes for optoelectronics

Wilken Seemann*, Mahmoud Elhajhasan, Julian Themann, Katharina Dudde, Guillaume Würsch, Jana Lierath, and Gordon Callsen†

Joachim Ciers and Åsa Haglund

Nakib H. Protik

Giuseppe Romano

Raphaël Butté, Jean-François Carlin, and Nicolas Grandjean

  • MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab, IBM Research, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

  • *Also at MAPEX Center for Materials and Processes, Universität Bremen, Bibliotheksstraße 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany
  • †Contact author: gcallsen@uni-bremen.de
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Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 024028 – Published 9 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/fh33-jjpq

Abstract

Semiconductor membranes are widely used in research fields that target medical, biological, environmental, and optical applications. Often such membranes derive their functionality from a nanopatterning, which challenges the determination of their optical, electronic, mechanical, and thermal properties. In this work, we demonstrate the noninvasive, all-optical thermal characterization of approximately-800-nm-thick and approximately-150-μm-wide membranes that consist mainly of wurtzite GaN and a stack of In0.15Ga0.85N quantum wells as a built-in light source. Because of their application in photonics, e.g., for vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers, such photonic membranes are bright light emitters, which challenges their thermal characterization by optical means. We combine top-view two-laser Raman thermometry (2LRT) with time-resolved photoluminescence spectroscopy to extract the in-plane thermal conductivity κin~plane of these membranes, which represents a notable difference from previous studies on epitaxial GaN films. Thus, we can disentangle the entire laser-induced power balance. Thermal imaging by Raman spectroscopy yields κin plane=165−14+16Wm−1K−1 for the best membrane. This result compares well with κin plane=177Wm−1K−1 obtained by ab initio simulations based on a solution of the linearized phonon Boltzmann transport equation, including three- and four-phonon scattering, as well as phonon-isotope and phonon-boundary scattering. Furthermore, we study how κin plane is affected by a roughening of the membrane’s back side and additional semiconductor layers. For the membrane with the roughest back side, we observe a reduction of κin plane by almost 40%, which is accompanied by an anisotropy of κin plane due to etch channel formation. Thanks to the 2LRT approach, such variations and anisotropies of κin plane become accessible to the experimentalist via highly spatially resolved temperature maps.

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Phys. Rev. Applied 25, 024028– Published 9 February, 2026
  • Received 16 October 2024
  • Revised 15 October 2025
  • Accepted 19 December 2025
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