A novel hybrid model and simulation results for an advanced, graded base AlGaN/GaN heterojunction bipolar transistor structure are presented. The base of the n-p-n HBT examined has two parts, a linearly graded AlGaN layer on the emitter side and a heavily p-doped GaN layer on the collector side. In the hybrid model developed here the potential profile is first calculated self-consistently in the biased state taking into account ionized impurity charges, polarization charges, and majority carrier charges. The minority carrier transport is examined subsequently. Injection of electrons from the emitter is modeled as a thermionic emission process. The minority electron transport process in the graded region is drift-dominated due to the large built-in effective field strength. In the low-field GaN layer of the base, electron transport is assumed to be diffusion-dominated. High-level injection effects are modeled in the framework of the Gummel-Poon model. Example structure design parameters are presented and it is found that the calculated current gain can be greater than 25, with a collector current density of 104A/cm2.

The physics of bulk wurtzite-structure III-nitride materials and of III-nitride heterostructures includes many phenomena that can be modulated by the application of stress. In particular, p- type material is expected to display a rich variety of piezo-resistive and piezo-optic effects that originate from the stress-induced modulation of lattice polarization charges, of valence band energies, and of bulk, surface, and interface defect states in the band gap. Here we focus on the expected effects of in-plane uniaxial on p-channel AlGaN/GaN heterostructures grown along the hexagonal axis on sapphire substrates. The valence band structure in the channel region is calculated self-consistently in the framework of a six-band Rashba-Sheka-Pikus (RSP) Hamiltonian. Stress-effects are included (in linear elastic theory) through deformation potentials and through the modulation of interfacial polarization charges associated with the piezoelectric nature of the constituent materials.

Properties of GaN layers grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on c-plane of sapphire have been investigated using atomic force microscopy (AFM), wet etching for defect investigation, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), high-resolution X-ray diffraction, Hall effect measurements and low-temperature photoluminescence (PL). Tapping-mode AFM images of the as-grown samples showed atomically smooth surfaces (rms roughness ≍ 0.2 nm) consisting of terraces separated by about 3Å bi-layer steps. Hot H3PO4 chemical etching was used to produce hexagonal-shaped etch pits at the surface defect sites as revealed by AFM imaging. The obtained etch pit densities (9×108 - 2 ×109 cm−2) were in agreement with the dislocation density found by plan-view and cross-sectional TEM observations. The full-width at half-maximum (FWHM) of the X-ray diffraction rocking curve was about 4.8 and 3.9 arcmin for the symmetric (002) and asymmetric (104) directions, respectively. PL spectrum at 15 K demonstrated sharp peaks (FWHM ≍ 4 meV) in the excitonic region, which were attributed to free and bound excitons. The spectrum contained also weak PL bands with maxima at about 2.2, 2.9 and 3.27 eV, which have been attributed to three different acceptors.

ZnO layer was epitaxially grown with a high growth rate around 800nm/hour on C-sapphire at relatively low temperature 400°C by plasma-assisted epitaxy in oxygen plasma which was excited by radio- frequency power at 13.56MHz. Photoluminescence spectra, which were dominated by strong donor-bound exciton emissions and free-exciton emissions at 10K, indicated deep levels native-defects were well prevented in the layers grown by the optimized growth condition including the power to discharge oxygen gas. Initial layers grown at very low temperature increased the probability of ZnO-crystal nucleation, compared with the direct growth on the sapphire, and were very effective in decreasing surface roughness and then improving the crystal quality of the successively grown ZnO layers. The full-width at half-maximum of donor-bound exciton emission was dependent on the initial layer growth condition and the narrowest value of the FWHM was obtained as 1.7meV on PAE-layers deposited at 400°C on the initial layer grown at 150°C.

Scanning Kelvin probe microscopy (SKPM) technique operated in feedback mode has been used to characterize GaN (unintentionally n-type doped, n+ doped and semi-insulating), and Al0.35Ga0.65N/GaN heterostructures (with varying Al0.35Ga0.65N thickness) grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition and molecular beam epitaxy. SKPM was used to measure the surface potential on these materials. The measurement technique was calibrated using metal calibration samples of Pt, Au, Ni and Al. The BSBH for n-doped GaN was measured to be 0.7 eV, which is in good agreement with values reported in the literature. Growth features such as dislocations present on the surfaces of III-nitrides were also investigated for their electrical properties using SKPM and non-contact mode atomic force microscopy, simultaneously. The dislocations have been found to be negatively charged for GaN as well as Al0.35Ga0.65N/GaN heterostructure samples.

PhotoCurrent (PC) experiments on GaN/AlGaN multiple quantum wells, both spectrally and temporally resolved, have shown that a photopersistence effect exists in our samples even at room temperature. A peak in the rise and decay times of PC vs. time appears in correspondence of wavelengths typical of Yellow-Band features while this is not seen in PL. This fact seems to indicate that YB defects give rise here to carrier trapping rather than recombination. Furthermore, the observed persistence times seem to be peculiar of MultiQuantum Wells and this possibly calls into play the role of built-in fields in the defects dynamics.

As the group III nitride semiconductor technology matures, an increasing number of devices are being fabricated with high Al fraction AlGaN. In this study, ohmic behavior is achieved using Ti/Al/Pt/Au contacts to n-Al0.4Ga0.6N, which is the highest Al fraction for which ohmic contact formation has been reported. The effect of contact composition, pretreatment, and annealing conditions is studied by 30 s isochronal annealing experiments between 500°C and 1000°C. A specific contact resistance ρC of (5±3) × 10−5 ωcm2 is obtained using Ti(26 nm)/Al(74 nm)/Pt(50 nm)/Au(50 nm) contacts to n-Al0.4Ga0.6N annealed in N2 at 800°C; however, this value is shown to be artificially high because the metal sheet resistance RM is 4 ω/⊏ causing an artifact in the data analysis. All contacts with ρC < 10−3 ωcm2 exhibit a local minimum in ρC after annealing at 800°C. The observed increase in ρC upon annealing at 850°C and 900°C, however, is not an artifact originating from a change in RM. The top Au layer is found to play an active role in forming ohmic contacts with low ρC, since omitting the Au layer yields an increase in ρC of two orders of magnitude after annealing at 800°C. Furthermore, leaving out the Au layer requires an annealing temperature of 700°C to result in linear I-V curves for currents up to 100 µA, as opposed to 500°C when the Au layer is present. The role of Au is further studied in Ti(26 nm)/Al(74 nm)/Ni(50 nm)/Au(50 nm) contacts, where Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy reveals Ga in the metal layer and/or Au buried deeper than the original semiconductor-metal interface, and x-ray diffraction indicates the formation of new phases to happen concurrently with a decrease in ρC of three orders of magnitude.

The influence of pyroelectric and piezoelectric polarizations on the lattice dynamics of strained III-nitride based structures is investigated within a macroscopic framework. New relationships between stress and strain are derived, which take into account the piezoelectric fields, which appear in the strained III-nitride layers. Consequently, the strained phonon frequencies in such systems differ from those calculated within the elasticity theory framework. In the case of strained, free-standing GaN/AlN superlattices grown along the [0001] axis, the difference of the spontaneous polarizations of GaN and AlN also contributes to the change in the effective strain along the growth direction. The corresponding shift of the zone center phonon frequencies of GaN and AlN might be negligible or significant, depending on the value of the ratio of the GaN and AlN layer thickness.

We have investigated the Raman scattering spectra in C-implanted GaN epilayers. (a) In as-implanted GaN, new Raman bands at 293, 376, 669, 1027, 1094 and 1053 cm−1 appeared. From phonon-dispersion curves for hexagonal GaN, the 293 cm−1 and 669 cm−1 bands were tentatively assigned to the highest acoustic-phonon branch and the optical-phonon branch at the Brillouin zone boundaries, respectively; the 1027 and 1094 cm−1 peaks might be caused by two-phonon scattering involving the 376 and 669 cm−1 phonons, and the 376 cm−1and A1(LO) phonons respectively. (b) Two sharp bands at ∼1350 and ∼1600 cm−1 were observed in the Raman spectra of carbon- implanted GaN after post-implantation annealing treatments. The intensities of these two bands increased while their full widths at half maximum decreased with increasing annealing temperature. We assigned them, respectively, to the D and G bands of small graphite crystallites arising from C implantation and post-implantation annealing. The observation of these two bands indicates the formation of small graphite crystallites in C-implanted GaN.

We investigate acoustic phonon scattering processes for holes in wurtzite gallium nitride. Using a six-band Rashba-Sheka-Pikus Hamiltonian description of the valence bands of gallium nitride, total scattering rates are calculated by numerical integration over final states. An examination of the interband and intraband processes shows strong scattering rate anisotropy between holes moving parallel to and perpendicular to the hexagonal plane. Results are given for inelastic acoustic deformation potential and piezoelectric scattering processes involving both longitudinal and transverse acoustic phonon absorption.

We have investigated the effects of plasma surface treatment on ohmic contacts to n-type GaN. Prior to metal evaporation, n-GaN surface was etched either chemically using aqua-regia (control sample) or by means of inductively coupled Cl2/BCl3, N2 or Ar plasmas. The metal system adopted in our investigation was Ti/Al/Pd/Au. The as-deposited Ti/Al/Pd/Au contact on aqua-regia treated n-GaN exhibits an ohmic behavior with a specific contact resistance (ρc) of 2×10−4ωcm2. After annealing at 500°C for 5min, ρc is reduced by approximately 2 orders of magnitude to 5×10−6ωcm2. For Cl2/BCl3 and N2 plasma treated n-GaN surface, the as-deposited Ti/Al/Pd/Au contacts also yield ohmic behavior and ρc's are about 2×10−4 and 5×10−4 ωcm2 respectively. After annealing at 500°C for 5min, ρc's are reduced by about 3 orders of magnitude to around 5×10−7 and 8×10−7 ωcm2 respectively. On the other hand, the as-deposited Ti/Al/Pd/Au contact on Ar plasma treated n-GaN exhibits a non-ohmic behavior. After annealing at 500°C for 5min, ρc is about 5×10−7 ωcm2 and the lowest ρc of 7×10−8 ωcm2 is obtained after annealing at 700°C for 5min. The contacts on other surface treated n-GaN are found to degrade at 700°C annealing. By comparing the values of ρc for various surface treatments, particularly those after annealing, it is observed that plasma etching can be used beneficially in the formation of ohmic contacts – plasma surface treatment using Cl2/BCl3, N2 or Ar has resulted in an order of magnitude reduction in ρc compared to chemical surface treatment by aqua-regia.

The design of Gallium Nitride based Metal-Semiconductor-Metal Ultra-Violet detector is discussed. We introduce a simulation model using Medici to describe the performances of such detectors. Structure parameters, such as the inter-digitated electrode dimension and the GaN layer thickness, are optimized for response current and time using this model. The simulation results can be explained by the variation of depletion region. We introduce the “effective electric field intensity” to describe the depletion region. The relationship between the “effective electric field intensity” and structure parameters are simulated and discussed.

Deep defects responsible for broad bands in the red-to-green range of the photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of undoped and Si-doped GaN grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) were studied by employing PL and PL excitation (PLE) methods. In HVPE grown samples, a red luminescence (RL) and a green luminescence (GL) bands were observed, respectively, at about 1.9 and 2.4 eV. Similar in positions but different in properties red and green bands (RL2 and GL2, respectively) dominated in the samples grown in Ga-rich conditions by MBE with radio frequency plasma as a nitrogen source (RF-MBE). A yellow luminescence (YL) with a maximum at about 2.2 eV dominated in the samples with ammonia used as a nitrogen source (NH3-MBE). It has been established from the variation of temperature, excitation intensity and excitation wavelength that the abovementioned five bands are related to different deep-level defects.

Growth and characterization of p-type 4H-SiC epitaxial layers grown on (11-20) substrates are reported. P-type 4H-SiC epilayers with smooth surface morphology have been grown on (11-20) substrates by low-pressure, hot-wall type CVD with SiH4–C3H8–H2–TMA system. The doping concentration can be controlled in the range from about 1×1016cm−3 to 1×1019cm−3. Anisotropy of the crystalline quality is observed by x-ray diffraction measurement. P-type epilayers, in which near band-gap emissions are dominated and D-A pair peak is not observed, are obtained. Hole mobility of (11-20) epilayers is smaller than that of (0001) epilayers probably due to the lack of crystalline quality compared to (0001) epilayers. The results of both low-temperature photoluminescence and the temperature dependence of Hall effect measurements indicate that the boron concentration as undoped impurity in (11-20) epilayer is lower than that of (0001) epilayer. This may be caused by the smaller incorporation efficiency of boron into (11-20) epilayer than that of (0001) epilayer.

The interface trap density NT is extracted from the experimental low-frequency noise data for GaN/AlGaN heterostructure field-effect transistors (HFETs). The trap density is determined based on the carrier-density fluctuation formalism. We show that the value of NT approximately defines the noise response of different GaN/AlGaN HFETs fabricated on the same wafer and it weakly depends on the gate bias. The dependence is due to the non-uniformity of the trap distribution. A model for computer simulation of the low-frequency noise in GaN devices is proposed.

Ionization energies and electron affinities of clean AlxGa1−xN(0001) surfaces were investigated by ultraviolet photoemission spectroscopy over the whole composition range. The samples were cleaned with cycles of N+-ion sputtering and annealing partly within a Ga atom flux. The ionization energy is measured as 6.5 eV and is almost independent of the aluminum content in good agreement with the general chemical trend. The electron affinity decreases linearly with composition from 3.1 eV for GaN to 0.25 eV for AlN. No evidence for negative electron affinity at AlN(0001) surfaces was found. Adsorption of oxygen at room temperature leads to a significant increase of the ionization energy and electron affinity. With AlN(0001) surfaces, an oxygen uptake of 0.6 monolayers is observed after exposures of 108 Langmuirs and the ionization energy increases by approximately 2 eV.

1.6 MeV He+ ions were implanted at room temperature into (0001) 4H-SiC at a dose of 1×1017 cm−2 and then annealed at 1500°C for 30 min. Small bubbles are readily observed in the as-implanted sample but also an amorphous layer. After a 1500°C annealing, recrystallization of the amorphous state occurs and large bubbles or cavities are observed. However their shape strongly depends of their location inside the buried layer. The recrystallization consists of polytypisme, 4H-SiC growth along the c-direction from the substrate, columnar 4H-SiC and epitaxial growth of 3C-SiC.

The interfacial reaction and phase formation as a function of the annealing temperature (600÷1000°C) and times were investigated on nickel thin films evaporated on n type 6H-SiC (0001) substrate. The study was carried out employing a combination of Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry, X-Ray Diffraction, Transmission Electron Microscopy and sheet resistance measurements. Also several TLM structures and Schottky diodes were fabricated with the same processes and a correlation has been found between the annealing process and the electrical measurements. The only nickel silicide phase that has been observed between 600 and 950 °C was the Ni2Si. The carbon of the consumed silicon carbide layer has been dissolved in the silicide film, during the reaction, forming carbon precipitates. The Ni2Si/SiC Schottky diodes show an almost ideal characteristics (n=1.07) and a barrier height of about 1.3 eV. From the electrical characterisation a non uniform Schottky barrier height seems to be formed.

We have studied radiative and nonradiative recombination at surface states in GaN, including as-grown samples and those treated with acids or bases. The surface states manifested themselves in two ways: (i) a reversible increase of the photoluminescence (PL) intensity after ultraviolet (UV) illumination in vacuum and (ii) appearance of new PL bands after treatment with acid or base and subsequent exposure to air. It has been established that the GaN surface physi-sorbs species from air (presumably oxygen) which induce surface states acting as nonradiative recombination centers. It has been found that nonradiative recombination of photogenerated carriers via surface states comprises more than 70% of the recombination in some GaN samples. Another type of the surface state, which participates in radiative recombination, has been found in GaN samples with Ga polarity after brief etching of the surface with hot acid or base and subsequent exposure to air. In such samples, a broad PL band emerges in the blue region of the spectrum at low temperatures. The blue band has been attributed to transitions of photogenerated electrons from donors in the near-surface depletion region to the surface states introduced by the above-mentioned procedure. The changes in the GaN surface caused by etching were examined by atomic force microscopy. In some samples the blue band appeared even when no evidence of the layer etching was found except for quite shallow etch pits formed at dislocation sites. The emerging blue band can be related to the surface states formed on the a-planes of etch pits.

Characteristics of traps are extracted from excess noise spectra of the doped-and undoped-channel GaN/AlGaN heterostructure field-effect transistors. The two types of excess noise that have been analyzed include flicker, e.g. 1/fγ noise, and generation-recombination noise. The average trap density determined for the undoped and doped devices is 1.1 × 1016 cm−3 and 7.1 × 1017 cm−3, respectively. Two distinct trap time constants τ determined for doped devices were 16 μsec and 0.1 msec. The trap characteristics obtained from the analysis of the excess noise spectra are in agreement with data provided by other techniques.