Electrical transport in epitaxially grown undoped and Si-doped degenerate GaN films

TL;DR

This study investigates the electrical transport properties of epitaxially grown undoped and Si-doped GaN films, revealing how doping and growth conditions influence resistivity, carrier concentration, and mobility, with detailed scattering mechanism analysis.

Contribution

It provides new insights into how Si doping and nitrogen flow ratios affect the electrical properties and scattering mechanisms in epitaxial GaN films.

Findings

Si doping significantly reduces resistivity.

Carrier concentration saturates at high N2 flow ratios.

Mobility increases with carrier concentration and temperature.

Abstract

Undoped and Si-doped GaN films were grown epitaxially on sapphire by reactive rf sputtering of GaAs (and Si) in Ar-N2 mixture. The resistivity of undoped GaN film grown at 100% N2 was ~2 x 105 {\Omega} cm, which reduced to ~1 {\Omega} cm in Si-doped film, revealing the effect of Si doping. With decrease of N2 from 100% to 75%, the carrier concentration of Si-doped films increased from ~7 x 1018 cm-3 to ~2 x 1019 cm-3, but remained practically unchanged as N2 was decreased to 20%, which is explained by effects due to saturation of Si doping and increase of Ga interstitials as well as compensation by N interstitials and Ga vacancies. Undoped and Si-doped films grown below 20% N2 displayed similar carrier concentrations (~1020 cm-3), due to dominance of Ga interstitials. Both undoped and Si-doped films were degenerate and displayed increase of mobility with carrier concentration and temperature, which was analyzed by the combined effect of ionized impurity and dislocation scattering, using compensation ratio as fitting parameter. At carrier concentrations below 1019 cm-3, the mobility was governed by both ionized impurity and dislocation scattering, while at higher carrier concentrations, ionized impurity scattering was found to dominate, limited by compensation due to acceptors. In spite of the degenerate character, the films displayed a small decrease of carrier concentration with temperature, along with a nearly linear decrease of mobility, which are explained by a marginal increase of compensation ratio with decrease of temperature, taking into account the band edge fluctuation effects.