  Residual strain plays a critical role in determining the crystalline quality
of nitride epitaxial layers and in modifying their band structure; this often
leads to several interesting physical phenomena. It is found, for example, that
compressive strain in AlxGa1-xN layers grown on AlyGa1-yN (x<y) templates
results in an anti-crossing of the valence bands at considerably much higher Al
composition than expected. This happens even in the presence of large and
negative crystal field splitting energy for AlxGa1-xN layers. A judicious
magnitude of the compressive strain can support vertical light emission (out of
the c-plane) from AlxGa1-xN quantum wells up to x\approx 0.80, which is
desirable for the development of deep ultraviolet light-emitting diodes
designed to operate below 250nm with transverse electric polarization
characteristics.
