Low defect AlN/GaN high electron mobility transistor (HEMT) structures, with very high values of electron mobility (>1800 cm2/V s) and sheet charge density (>3×1013 cm−2), were grown by rf plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) on sapphire and SiC, resulting in sheet resistivity values down to ∼100 Ω/◻ at room temperature. Fabricated 1.2 μm gate devices showed excellent current-voltage characteristics, including a zero gate saturation current density of ∼1.3 A/mm and a peak transconductance of ∼260 mS/mm. Here, an all MBE growth of optimized AlN/GaN HEMT structures plus the results of thin-film characterizations and device measurements are presented.

n-ZnO/p-GaN heterojunction light-emitting diodes with and without a sandwiched AlN layer were fabricated. The electroluminescence (EL) spectrum acquired from the n-ZnO/p-GaN displays broad emission at 650 nm originating from ZnO and weak emission at 440 nm from GaN, whereas the n-ZnO/AlN/p-GaN exhibits strong violet emission at 405 nm from ZnO without GaN emission. The EL intensity is greatly enhanced by inserting a thin AlN intermediate layer and it can be attributed to the suppressed formation of the GaOx interfacial layer and confinement effect rendered by the AlN potential barrier layer.

Photoelectrochemical ͑PEC͒ etching of p-type GaN has been realized in room temperature, 0.1 M KOH solutions. PEC etching of GaN was achieved by applying a positive bias to the surface of the p-GaN layer through a deposited titanium mask. The applied bias reduces the field at the semiconductor surface, which induced the dissolution of the GaN. The effect of bias on etch rate and morphology was examined. It was found that insulating the Ti mask from the KOH solution with Si 3 N 4 significantly increases the etch rate. The rms roughness of the etched region decreased as the bias voltage increased. Etch rates as high as 4.4 nm/min were recorded for films etched at 2 V.

The origin of hysteresis in capacitance-voltage (C-V) characteristics was studied for Schottky diodes prepared on AlGaN∕GaN transistor structures with GaN (Fe) buffers. The application of reverse bias leads to a shift of C-V curves toward higher positive voltages. The magnitude of the effect is shown to increase for lower temperatures. The phenomenon is attributed to tunneling of electrons from the Schottky gate to localized states in the structure. A technique labeled “reverse” deep level transient spectroscopy was used to show that the deep traps responsible for the hysteresis have activation energies of 0.25, 0.6, and 0.9eV. Comparison with deep trap spectra of GaN buffers and Si doped n-GaN films prepared on GaN buffers suggests that the traps in question are located in the buffer layer.

The effects of 10MeV electron irradiation on AlGaN∕GaN and AlN∕GaN heterojunctions grown by molecular beam epitaxy are reported. The irradiation increases the resistivity of the GaN buffer due to compensation by radiation defects with levels near Ec−1eV and decreases the mobility of the two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) near the AlGaN∕GaN (or AlN∕GaN) interface. The bulk carrier removal rate in the GaN buffer is the same for both types of structures and similar to carrier removal rates for undoped n-GaN films. In structures with a density of residual donors of ∼1015cm−3, irradiation with electron doses of ∼5×1015cm−2 renders the buffer semi-insulating. The 50% degradation of the 2DEG conductivity happens at several times higher doses (close to 3×1016cm−2 versus 6.5×1015cm−2) for AlN∕GaN than for AlGaN∕GaN structures, most likely because of the lower thickness of the AlN barrier.