Electrical characterization of magnesium implanted gallium nitride

Abstract

Gallium nitride layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on c axis oriented sapphire substrates were implanted with 180 keV magnesium ions with ion doses between 1×1014 and 1×1016 cm−2. The implantation induced defect states were investigated by temperature dependent conductivity (TDC) as well as by thermal and optical admittance spectroscopy (TAS, OAS) measurements. Dominant carrier emissions having thermal activation energies between 360 and 800 meV were found in TAS and TDC. These states are assigned to implantation induced electron traps since they do not appear in the nonimplanted reference sample. Defect states with similar transition energies were also observed in OAS resulting in an enhancement of defect-to-band transitions in the near band-gap region around 3.45 eV, in the blue band around 3.0 eV, as well as in the midgap range for photon energies between 2.5 and 1.80 eV, respectively. In addition, new transitions were found at 2.1 and 1.95 eV. Furthermore, transitions from implantation induced shallow states were observed, i.e., the magnesium acceptor as well as a new donor level at about 70 meV, tentatively discussed as nitrogen vacancy. The critical ion dose for amorphization was determined to be between 5×1015 and 1×1016 Mg+ cm−2 using x-ray diffraction.