Patent ID: 7851243

Claim:
A method of fabricating a semiconductor light-emitting device, the semiconductor light-emitting device including a light-emitting layer of a strained hexagonal group III nitride, the method comprising the steps of: choosing a plane orientation for the light-emitting layer for estimating a direction of a piezoelectric field in the light-emitting layer; forming a quantum well structure for estimating the direction of the piezoelectric field in the light-emitting layer, and p-type and n-type gallium nitride semiconductors to prepare a substrate product, the quantum well structure being formed in the chosen plane orientation; measuring photoluminescence spectra of the substrate product while applying voltage across the substrate product, to obtain a voltage dependency of photoluminescence; estimating the direction of the piezoelectric field in the light-emitting layer based on the measured voltage dependency; preparing a wafer having a primary surface for forming the light-emitting layer with the chosen plane orientation; and forming a semiconductor laminate for the semiconductor light-emitting device on the primary surface of the wafer, the semiconductor laminate including a first gallium nitride based semiconductor region, the light-emitting layer, and a second gallium nitride based semiconductor region; the light-emitting layer including a well layer of gallium nitride based semiconductor and a barrier layer of gallium nitride based semiconductor; the light-emitting layer being provided between the first gallium nitride based semiconductor region and the second gallium nitride based semiconductor region; the first gallium nitride based semiconductor region including one or more n-type gallium nitride based semiconductor layers; the second gallium nitride based semiconductor region including a gallium nitride based semiconductor layer and one or more p-type gallium nitride based semiconductor layers, the gallium nitride based semiconductor layer having a band gap larger than that of the barrier layer; the gallium nitride based semiconductor layer in the second gallium nitride based semiconductor region being adjacent to the light-emitting layer; each of the well layer and the barrier layer extending along a reference plane, the reference plane tilting from a plane orthogonal to a reference axis, the reference axis extending in a direction of each of a c-axis, an a-axis and an m-axis; and a direction of the piezoelectric field being defined with respect to a direction from the second gallium nitride based semiconductor region toward the first gallium nitride based semiconductor region.