We have employed the plane-wave pseudopotential method to study point defect complexes in GaN and AlN. The results reveal that defect complexes consisting of dominant donors bound to cation vacancies are likely to be formed in both materials. The position of the electronic levels in the band gap due to these defect complexes is shown to correlate well with the experimentally commonly observed broadband luminescence both in GaN and in AlN. The origin of the large bandwidth of the luminescence spectrum is discussed.

• Received 15 October 1996

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.55.9571