Carrier dynamics of Mg-doped indium nitride

Abstract

We report the carrier density dependence of carrier dynamics of Mg-doped InN (InN:Mg) films. Recently, we have demonstrated a significant enhancement of terahertz emission from InN:Mg, which is due to the temporal evolution of drift and diffusion currents depending on the background carrier density. We studied the details of carrier dynamics of InN:Mg which is crucial for the clarification of the terahertz emission mechanism by performing the time-resolved optical reflectivity measurement on InN:Mg films grown with different Mg-doping levels. Experimental analysis demonstrates that the initial sharp drop and recovery of reflectivity response of InN:Mg films are dominated by photocarrier-dependent bandgap renormalization and band filling processes, whereas the slow decay time constant (τ 2 ) of reflectivity of InN:Mg has the strong dependence on the background carrier density. As the carrier density decreases from that of undoped InN, τ 2 of InN:Mg continuously increases and reaches the maximum value at a critical value of ~1x10 18 cm -3 . Interestingly, the strongest terahertz radiation was observed at this carrier density and it keeps decreasing with the increase of carrier density. Intense terahertz radiation corresponds to the fast and large spatial separation of charged carrier density through diffusion and drift. Large spatial separation results in the longer decay time for charged carriers to reach equilibrium after strong emission of terahertz waves, and it explains the similar carrier density dependence of terahertz emission and τ 2 .