Investigación

 

Electrical characterization of GaN/ALN heterostructures grown by molecular beam epitaxy on silicon substrates

 

J.B. Rojas-Trigos^a, M. López-López^b, M.A. Venegas^b, G.S. Contreras-Puente^c, D. Jimenez-Olartec and G. Santana-Rodríguez^d

 

^a Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Centro de Investigación en Ciencia Aplicada y Tecnología Avanzada. Legaria No. 694 Colonia Irrigación, 11500 México D.F., México.

^b Departamento de Física, Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Avenida IPN No. 2508 Colonia San Pedro Zacatenco, 07360 México D.F., México.

^c Instituto Politécnico Nacional, Departamento de Física, Escuela Superior de Física y Matemáticas, Avenida IPN Edificio 9, Unidad Profesional Adolfo López Mateos, Zacatenco, 07738 México D.F., México.

^d Instituto de Investigaciones en Materiales, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Circuito Exterior, Ciudad Universitaria, Colonia Coyoacán, 04510 México D.F., México.

 

Received 26 August 2014;
accepted 6 November 2015

 

Abstract

In this paper, n-type gallium nitride thin films were grown on p-type and n-type silicon substrates by Molecular Beam Epitaxy technique, employing an aluminum nitride layer as an insulator buffer coating. The samples constitute primary semiconductor-insulator-semiconductor or SIS heterostructures, on which silver electrical contacts were deposited superficially by sputtering for electrical characterization purposes. The current intensity vs. voltage curves, charge carriers density, diffusion coefficient and mobility of charge carriers were determined in darkness conditions. Under AM1.5 homogenous illumination, the samples exhibited relatively large open-circuit voltage values, but low values for energy conversion efficiencies. Additionally, the dependency in photon energy of the open-circuit voltage was determined, in the range 1.77 eV to 4.13 eV, showing a minimum in the energy corresponding to the GaN energy band gap. Finally we discuss the prevailing charge transfer mechanism.

Keywords: Electrical characterization; gallium nitride; Hall effect; molecular beam epitaxy; semiconductor-insulator-semiconductor structures

 

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Acknowledgments

This work has been supported partially by ICyT-DF (Now SECITI-DF) PICCO10-29 Project, SENER-CONACYT México Project No. 151076, SIP-IPN and COFAA-IPN, México. Finally, the authors thanks the facilities provided by COTEBAL-IPN for the realization of this work. A special acknowledgement is made to M. Ramirez-López, M. Pérez-Caro and Y. L. Casallas-Moreno from CINVESTAV-IPN.

 

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