We have investigated the use of focused ion beam (FIB) etching for the fabrication of GaN-based devices. Although work has shown that conventional reactive ion etching (RIE) is in most cases appropriate for the GaN device fabrication, the direct write facility of FIB etching – a well-established technique for optical mask repair and for IC failure analysis and repair – without the requirement for depositing an etch mask is invaluable. A gallium ion beam of about 20nm diameter was used to sputter GaN material. The etching rate depends linearly on the ion dose per area with a slope of 3.5 × 10−4 μm3/pC. At a current of 3nA, for example, this corresponds to an each rate of 1.05 μm3/s. Good etching qualities have been achieved with a side wall roughness significantly below 0.1 μm. Change in the roughness of the etched surface plane stay below 8nm.

DC and intrinsic small signal parameters are reported for AlGaN/GaN high electron mobility transistors. The calculations are based upon a self-consistent solution of Schrödinger and Poisson’s equation to model the quantum well formed in GaN. Transport parameters are obtained from an ensemble Monte Carlo simulation.

Ensemble Monte Carlo calculations of electron transport at high applied electric field strengths in bulk, wurtzite phase InN are presented. The calculations are performed using a full band Monte Carlo simulation that includes a pseudopotential band structure, all of the relevant phonon scattering agents, and numerically derived impact ionization transition rates. The full details of the first five conduction bands, which extend in energy to about 8 eV above the conduction band minimum, are included in the simulation. The electron initiated impact ionization coefficients and quantum yield are calculated using the full band Monte Carlo model. Comparison is made to previous calculations for bulk GaN and ZnS. It is found that owing to the narrower band gap in InN, a lower breakdown field exists than in either GaN or ZnS.

The quasi-LO and quasi-TO modes of AlN crystallite were investigated. The analysis indicates that the Raman mode behavior concurs with Loudons’ model of mode-mixing in wurtzite (WZ) structure crystals which is due to the long-range electrostatic field. Phononlifetimes of GaN and AlN crystallites were studied via Raman lineshape. It was found that the low energy E2 mode lifetime is about an order of magnitude longer than that of the other modes, and that impurities impact significantly the phonon-lifetimes.

The symmetry of the recombining electrons and holes in lightly photo-excited InGaN LEDs revealed through ODMR is related to the physical structure, band structure and defects present. Calculations of the electron-g within the k• p formalism give the average shift from the free-electron value for GaN but are not fully reconciled with the anisotropy. This theory is also extended to InGaN alloys for both pseudomorphic and relaxed layers. The average shift is close to the experimental values for the green LED. The strongly reduced hole anisotropies seen experimentally are explained by a recently published theory for acceptors in GaN.

A method is presented for fabricating fully wet-etched InGaN/GaN laser cavities using hotoenhanced electrochemical wet etching followed by crystallographic wet etching. Crystallographic wet chemical etching of n- and p-type GaN grown on c-plane sapphire is achieved using H3PO4 and various hydroxides, with etch rates as high as 3.2.μm/min. The crystallographic GaN etch planes are {0001}, {100}, {10}, {10}, and {103}. The vertical {100} planes appear perfectly smooth when viewed with a field-effect scanning electron microscope (FESEM), indicating a surface roughness less than 5 nm, suitable for laser facets. The etch rate and crystallographic nature for the various etching solutions are independent of conductivity, as shown by seamless etching of a p-GaN/undoped, high-resistivity GaN homojunction.

Gallium nitride wafer epitaxy on large diameter substrates is critical for the future fabrication of large area UV linear or 2D imaging arrays, as well as for the economical production of other GaN-based devices. Typical group III-nitride deposition is now performed on 2-inch diameter or smaller sapphire substrates. Reported here are visible blind, UV GaN p-i-n photodetectors which have been fabricated on 3-inch diameter (0001) sapphire substrates by RF atomic nitrogen plasma MBE. The uniformity across the wafer of spectral responsivity and shunt resistance (R0) for the p-i-n photodetectors has been characterized. Spectral responsivity and 1/f noise as a function of temperature exceeding 250°C will be presented for the GaN p-i-n photodetectors. Spectral response with >0.17 A/W at peak wavelength and having 4-6 orders of magnitude visible rejection has been achieved. 1/f noise typically less than 10−14 A/Hz1/2 at room temperature also has been achieved with GaN p-i-n photodiodes. The results have been correlated with proposed models for dark current and 1/f noise in GaN diodes.

The grown-in tensile strain, due to a lattice mismatch between AlGaN and GaN, is responsible for the observed cracking that seriously limits the feasibility of nitride-based ultraviolet (UV) emitters. We report in-situ monitoring of strain/stress during MOCVD of AlGaN based on a wafer-curvature measurement technique. The strain/stress measurement confirms the presence of tensile strain during growth of AlGaN pseudomorphically on a thick GaN layer. Further growth leads to the onset of stress relief through crack generation. We find that the growth of AlGaN directly on low-temperature (LT) GaN or AlN buffer layers results in a reduced and possibly controllable strain.

Low frequency noise measurements are a powerful tool for detecting deep traps in semiconductor devices and investigating trapping-recombination mechanisms. We have performed low frequency noise measurements on a number of photoconducting detectors fabricated on autodoped n-GaN films grown by ECR-MBE. At room temperature, the noise spectrum is dominated by 1/f noise and thermal noise for low resistivity material and by generationrecombination (G-R) noise for high resistivity material. Noise characteristics were measured as a function of temperature in the 80K to 300K range. At temperatures below 150K, 1/f noise is dominant and at temperatures above 150K, G-R noise is dominant. Optical excitation revealed the presence of traps not observed in the dark, at room temperature.

Patterning the group-III nitrides has been challenging due to their strong bond energies and relatively inert chemical nature as compared to other compound semiconductors. Plasma etch processes have been used almost exclusively to pattern these films. The use of high-density plasma etch systems, including inductively coupled plasmas (ICP), has resulted in relatively high etch rates (often greater than 1.0 µm/min) with anisotropic profiles and smooth etch morphologies. However, the etch mechanism is often dominated by high ion bombardment energies which can minimize etch selectivity. The use of an ICP-generated BCl3 /Cl2 plasma has yielded a highly versatile GaN etch process with rates ranging from 100 to 8000 Å/min making this plasma chemistry a prime candidate for optimization of etch selectivity. In this study, we will report ICP etch rates and selectivities for GaN, AlN, and InN as a function of BCl3/Cl2 flow ratios, cathode rf-power, and ICP-source power. GaN:InN and GaN:AlN etch selectivities were typically less than 7:1 and showed the strongest dependence on flow ratio. This trend may be attributed to faster GaN etch rates observed at higher concentrations of atomic Cl which was monitored using optical emission spectroscopy (OES).

Fabricating device structures from the III-N wide bandgap semiconductors requires anisotropoic dry etching processes that leave smooth surfaces with stoichiometric composition after transferring high-resolution patterns with vertical sidewalls. The purpose of this article is to describe results obtained by a new low-damage dry etching technique that provides an alternative to the standard ion-enhanced dry etching methods in meeting these demands for processing the III-N materials.

High quality Ga-face and N-face AlGaN/GaN based heterostructures have been grown by plasma induced molecular beam epitaxy. By using Ga-face material we are able to fabricate conventional heterojunction field effect transistors. Because the N-face material confines electrons at a different heterojunction, the resulting transistors are called inverted. The Ga-face structures use a high temperature AlN nucleation layer to establish the polarity. Structures from these materials, relying only on polarization induced interface charge effects to create the two-dimensional electron gases, are used to confirm the polarity of the material as well as test the electrical properties of the layers. The resulting sheet concentrations of the two dimensional electron gases agree very well with the piezoelectric theory for this materials system. Hall mobilities of the two-dimensional gases for the N-face structures are as high as 1150 cm2/Vs and 3440 cm2/Vs for 300 K and 77 K respectively, while the Ga–face structures yield room temperature mobilities of 1190 cm2/Vs. Both structures were then fabricated into transistors and characterized. The inverted transistors, which were fabricated from the N-face material, yielded a maximum transconductance of 130 mS/mm and a current density of 905 mA/mm. Microwave measurements gave an ft of 7 GHz and an fmax of 12 GHz for a gate length of 1 µm. The normal transistors, fabricated from the Ga-face material, produced a maximum transconductance of 247 mS/mm and a current density of 938 mA/mm. Microwave measurements gave an ft of 50 GHz and an fmax of 97 GHz for a gate length of 0.25 µm. This shows that using plasma induced molecular beam epitaxy N-face and Ga(Al)-face AlGaN/GaN heterostructures can be grown with structural and electrical properties very suitable for high power field effect transistors.

It is demonstrated that GaN quantum dots with the wurtzite structure grown by molecular beam epitaxy on AlN exhibit optical properties which, depending on the size of the dots, may be dominated by piezoelectric effects. In "large" quantum dots with an average height and diameter of 4.1 and 17 nm, respectively, the photoluminescence peak is centered at 2.95 eV, nearly 0.5 eV below the bulk GaN bandgap, which is assigned to a piezoelectric field of 5.5 MV/cm present in the dots. The decay time of the photoluminescence was also measured. A comparison is carried out with theoretical calculation of the radiative lifetime.

We report on the first artificial fabrication of self-assembling AlGaN quantum dots (QDs) on AlGaN surfaces using metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The AlGaN QDs are fabricated using a growth mode change from 2-dimensional step-flow growth to 3-dimensional island formation by modifying the AlGaN surface energy with Si anti-surfactant. The average lateral size and the thickness of fabricated AlGaN QDs, as determined by AFM, are approximately 20 nm and 6nm, respectively. The dot density was found to be controlled from 5×1010 cm−2 down to 2×109 cm−2 by increasing the dose of Si anti-surfactant. We obtained the photoluminescence (PL) from AlGaN QDs embedded with Al0.38Ga0.62N capping layers. The Al incorporation in AlGaN QDs was controllable within the range of 1-5 %.

InGaN alloys with indium compositions ranging from 0–40% have been grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The dependence of the indium incorporation on growth temperature and group III/group V ratio has been studied. Scanning tunneling microscopy images, interpreted using first-principles theoretical computations, show that there is strong indium surface segregation on InGaN. Based on this surface segregation, a qualitative model is proposed to explain the observed indium incorporation dependence on the growth parameters.

Structural transformations in Ni/Si-based contacts to GaN occurring under heat treatment have been studied using transmission electron microscopy and secondary ion mass spectrometry. Transition from non-ohmic to ohmic behavior correlates with reaction between Ni and Si, and decomposition of the initially formed interfacial Ni:Ga:N layer. Transport of dopant atoms from metallization into GaN testifies in favour of the SPR process of ohmic contact formation

In organometallic vapor phase epitaxial growth of group III nitrides on sapphire, insertion of a low temperature interlayer is found to improve crystalline quality of AlxGa1−xN layer with x from 0 to 1. Here the effects of the low temperature deposited GaN or AlN interlayers on the structural quality of group III nitrides is discussed.

Epitaxial growth on GaN single bulk crystals sets new standards in GaN material quality. The outstanding properties provide new insights into fundamental material parameters (e.g. lattice constants, exciton binding energies, etc.) being not accessible by heteroepitaxial growth on sapphire or SiC. With MOVPE and MBE we realized unstrained GaN layers with dislocation densities about six orders of magnitude lower than in heteroepitaxy. Those layers revealed an exceptional optical quality as determined by a reduction of the photoluminescence linewidth from 5 to 0.1 meV and a reduced XRD rocking curve width from 400 to 20 arcsec.

Only recently, progress in surface preparation allowed morphologies of the layers suitable for device applications. We report on InGaN/GaN MQW structures as well as the first GaN pn- and InGaN/GaN double heterostructure LEDs on GaN single bulk crystals. Those LEDs are twice as bright as their counterparts grown on sapphire. In addition they reveal an improved high power characteristics, which is attributed to an enhanced crystal quality and an increased p-doping. Time resolved electroluminescence measurements proof that band/band recombination is the dominant emission mechanism for the InGaN/GaN LEDs.

Nitride-based device structures for electronic and optoelectronic applications usually incor-porate layers of AlxGa1−xN, and n- and p-type doping of these alloys is typically required. Experimental results indicate that doping efficiencies in AlxGa1−xN are lower than in GaN. We address the cause of these doping difficulties, based on results from first-principles density-functional-pseudopotential calculations. For n-type doping we will discuss doping with oxygen, the most common unintentional donor, and with silicon. For oxygen, a DX transition occurs which converts the shallow donor into a negatively charged deep level. We present experimental evidence that oxygen is a DX center in AlxGa1−xN for x>∼0.3. For p-type doping, we find that compensation by nitrogen vacancies becomes increasingly important as the Al content is in-creased. We also find that the ionization energy of the Mg acceptor increases with alloy composition x. To address the limitations on p-type doping we have performed a comprehensive investigation of alternative acceptor impurities; none of the candidates exhibits characteristics that surpass those of Mg in all respects.

As III-V nitride devices advance in technological importance, a fundamental understanding of device processing techniques becomes essential. Recent works have exposed various aspects of etch processes. The most recent advances and the greatest remaining challenges in the etching of GaN, AlN, and InN are reviewed. A more detailed presentation is given with respect to GaN high density plasma etching. In particular, the results of parametric and fundamental studies of GaN etching in a high density plasma are described. The effect of ion energy and mass on surface electronic properties is reported. Experimental results identify preferential sputtering as the leading cause of observed surface non-stoichiometry. This mechanism provides excellent surfaces for ohmic contacts to n-type GaN, but presents a major obstacle for Schottky contacts or ohmic contacts to p-type GaN. Chlorine-based discharges minimize this stoichiometry problem by improving the rate of gallium removal from the surface. In an effort to better understand the high density plasma etching process for GaN, in-situ mass spectrometry is employed to study the chlorine-based high density plasma etching process. Gallium chloride mass peaks were monitored in a highly surface sensitive geometry as a function of microwave power (ion flux), total pressure (neutral flux), and ion energy. Microwave power and pressure dependencies clearly demonstrate the importance of reactive ions in the etching of wide band gap materials. The ion energy dependence demonstrates the importance of adequate ion energy to promote a reasonable etch rate (≥100-150 eV). The benefits of ion-assisted chemical etching are diminished for ion energies in excess of 350 V, placing an upper limit to the useful ion energy range for etching GaN. The impact of these results on device processing will be discussed and future needs identified.