Hi Joachim,

Here is what happened.

In last two years I have been struggling with the physics department and administration of University of North Texas on a case of scientific misconduct. As the principal investigator in a nanophotonics research I have firm documents about the falsification and fabrication of data and results which is presented in a paper published in Applied Physics Letter 97, 221104 2010 titled Surface plasmon enhanced UV emission in AlGaN/GaN quantum well. To keep the reputation of the department and the university, my complaint was ignored and mistreated by physics chair and office of research integrity.

In this paper, Figure 3a is fabricated and Fig. 4 is not related to the specified sample. At the meantime the sample structure is also falsified.

My reasons for this case of misconduct is as follows;

1- According to my observations all the expeimental data shows consistency from 10K and upward to 300K (room temperature). In fact we studied two hybrid multilayer hetroostructures. A single quantum well (SQW) consisting of a 3 nm wide GaN QW layer sandwiched between Al0.2Ga0.8N cap and buffer layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on a c-plane Sapphire substrate. The second sample was a multiple quantum well (MQW) consisting of 20 periods of 4 nm wide GaN QWs embedded in Al0.3Ga0.7N (5 nm) barriers grown on a c-plane Sapphire substrate by MBE technique. We equally divided the surface of the samples into four parts. We kept one part as reference and evaporated 8nm of aluminum, gold and silver separately on three other parts.

Please make note of the followings;

a) Above 200K the PL emission approaches zero due to high defect density in AlGaN crystal which in turn causes the radiative emission to vanish.

b) For AlGaN every measurement is meaningful at low temperature. The efficient luminescence requires that the radiative lifetime should be much shorter than the non-radiative lifetime which is not the case for AlGaN at room temperature.

c) More important, the enhancements shown in Fig. 3a for silver and aluminum are fabricated and falsified. The only enhancement observed in the lab belongs to silver at 20K.

Considering the above facts, Fig. 3a is fabricated and there is no real data for it. This can be easily verified by taking the PL spectrum in the lab at room temperature.

2- Fig. 2 and Fig. 4 shows lifetime analysis of two different samples at low temperature. However they are misrepersented in the paper. Fig. 2 belongs to our multiple quantum well (MQW) sample where Fig. 4 belongs to the single quantum well (SQW) sample which is not even mentioned in the paper. However, by the way it is presented in the paper the raeder will be mislead by the fact that it belongs to the MQW sample.

3- The MQW sample 20 periods of quantum well while in the paper this is stated to be 3 periods.

In conclusion, the paper is falsifying the enhancement of emission for silver and aluminum which has never been observed in the lab especially at room temperature. The observed data shows that the emission spectrum for AlGaN QW hetrostructure at room temperature vanishes and there is no enhancement with any metals. If you have further question please let me know/

Thanks for your recommendation. However Arup Neogi is the person who submitted the paper to APL. I have informed the department chair and university administration too.

Since you worked with InGaN QW you realize the point. I think the APL reviewer should have been confused about the AlGaN QW nanostructure otherwise he would not accept this paper. It is very obvious that at room temperature you can not see such emission spectrum from AlGaN.

Agree with Joachim... This is definitely NOT the forum to discuss these things.. One option is to write to publisher..

But why did you woke up after 2 years.. that paper was published way back in 2010 !!!! Don't say that "I didn't knew".. Ignorance is NOT bliss..

Dear Sridhar,

I brought this issue on the RG to aware other researchers about misleading papers which could be published on journals like APL. This is for benefit of people like yourself.

@Amir

Let readers be the judge of quality of papers... and I don't see any benefit at large coming out of your ramblings on RG... This is NOT the right forum to settle scores

I think many researchers will benefit from this

Mr. Mohammadizia,

This serves to acknowledge receipt of your message to the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Inspector General Hotline. The Office of Inspector General Hotline facilitates the reporting of allegations of fraud, waste, or abuse, concerning Department of Energy programs and/or operations.

We have received your email regarding potential research misconduct at the University of North Texas. We have determined that this project was not funded by the Department of Energy, and as such, this matter does not fall under the purview of the Office of Inspector General.

If you have specific information to identify a DOE nexus please reply to this email and provide this information. Otherwise, you may wish to contact the National Science Foundation Office of Inspector General at http://www.nsf.gov/oig.

Thank you for contacting the Office of Inspector General Hotline.

Hotline Coordinator

U.S. Department of Energy

Office of Inspector General

It is acknowledged in the paper that the first author; J.L. is supported by a U.S. Department of Energy research grant, Even this is not true.