We report on the realization of a GaN high voltage vertical p-n diode operating at > 3.9 kV breakdown with a specific on-resistance < 0.9 mΩ.cm2. Diodes achieved a forward current of 1 A for on-wafer, DC measurements, corresponding to a current density > 1.4 kA/cm2. An effective critical electric field of 3.9 MV/cm was estimated for the devices from analysis of the forward and reverse current-voltage characteristics. Furthermore this suggests that the fundamental limit to the GaN critical electric field is significantly greater than previously believed.
Electrical performance and defect characterization of vertical GaN P-i-N diodes before and after irradiation with 2.5 MeV protons and neutrons is investigated. Devices exhibit increase in specific on-resistance following irradiation with protons and neutrons, indicating displacement damage introduces defects into the p-GaN and n- drift regions of the device that impact on-state device performance. The breakdown voltage of these devices, initially above 1700 V, is observed to decrease only slightly for particle fluence < {10{13}} hbox{cm}-2. The unipolar figure of merit for power devices indicates that while the on-resistance and breakdown voltage degrade with irradiation, vertical GaN P-i-Ns remain superior to the performance of the best available, unirradiated silicon devices and on-par with unirradiated modern SiC-based power devices.
High hole concentrations in AlxGa1−xN become increasingly difficult to obtain as the Al mole fraction increases. The problem is believed to be related to compensation, extended defects, and the band gap of the alloy. Whereas electrical measurements are commonly used to measure hole density, in this work we used electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to investigate a defect related to the neutral Mg acceptor. The amount and symmetry of neutral Mg in MOCVD-grown AlxGa1−xN with x = 0 to 0.28 was monitored for films with different dislocation densities and surface conditions. EPR measurements indicated that the amount of neutral Mg decreased by 60% in 900°C-annealed AlxGa1−xN films for x = 0.18 and 0.28 as compared with x = 0.00 and 0.08. A decrease in the angular dependence of the EPR signal accompanied the increased x, suggesting a change in the local environment of the Mg. Neither dislocation density nor annealing conditions contribute to the reduced amount of neutral Mg in samples with the higher Al concentration. Rather, compensation is the simplest explanation of the observations, because a donor could both reduce the number of neutral acceptors and cause the variation in the angular dependence.
We fabricated optically pumped and electrically injected ultraviolet (UV) lasers on reduced-threading-dislocation-density (reduced-TDD) AlGaN templates. The overgrowth of sub-micron-wide mesas in the Al0.32Ga0.68N templates enabled a tenfold reduction in TDD, to (2-3) × 108cm%2. Optical pumping of AlGaN hetero-structures grown on the reduced-TDD templates yielded a low lasing threshold of 34kW/cm2 at 346 nm. Roomtemperature pulsed operation of laser diodes at 353nm was demonstrated, with a threshold of 22.5 kA/cm2. Reduced-TDD templates have been developed across the entire range of AlGaN compositions, presenting a promising approach for extending laser diodes into the deep UV.
We use planar metamaterial resonators to enhance by more than two orders of magnitude the near infrared second harmonic generation obtained from intersubband transitions in III-Nitride heterostructures. The improvement arises from two factors: employing an asymmetric double quantum well design and aligning the resonators' cross-polarized resonances with the intersubband transition energies. The resulting nonlinear metamaterial operates at wavelengths where single photon detection is available, and represents a different class of sources for quantum photonics related phenomena.
Realization of efficient laser diodes with ultra-violet (UV) emission from ∼260-360 nm would enable many applications including fluorescence-based biological agent detection, sterilization, and portable water purification. While InGaN-based laser diodes are well developed down to ∼370 nm, achieving shorter UV wavelengths requires higher Al-content AlGaN alloys with increasing challenges in achieving p-type doping, strain-management, and low threading-dislocation-density (TDD) AlGaN templates. Given these challenges, few groups have reported AlGaN-based edge-emitting laser diodes (LDs) with emission < 355 nm.[1, 2] Most recently, random lasing via Anderson localization in AlGaN nanowire structures has demonstrated a novel approach to realizing deep-UV laser diodes.[3]
Epitaxial (111) MgO films were prepared on (0001) AlxGa1-xN via molecular-beam epitaxy for x=0 to x=0.67. Valence band offsets of MgO to AlxGa1-xN were measured using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy as 1.65±0.07eV, 1.36±0.05eV, and 1.05±0.09eV for x=0, 0.28, and 0.67, respectively. This yielded conduction band offsets of 2.75eV, 2.39eV, and 1.63eV for x=0, 0.28, and 0.67, respectively. All band offsets measured between MgO and AlxGa1-xN provide a>1eV barrier height to the semiconductor.
