Electronic structure near the band gap of heavily nitrogen doped GaAs and GaP

Abstract

AbstractIsoelectronic impurity nitrogen atoms have been found to generate a series of localized states in GaP and GaAs. These states can be either bound (within the band gap) or resonant (above the band gap) when in the dilute doping limit (roughly < 1019 cm−3 for GaP and < 1018 cm−3 for GaAs). With increasing nitrogen doping level, a shift of the absorption edge from the binary band gap has been observed for the so-called GaPN or GaAsN alloy. We discuss the similarity and dissimilarity between the two systems in the following aspects: (1) How does the nitrogen doping perturb the host band structure? (2) How do the nitrogen bound states evolve with increasing nitrogen doping level? (3) What are the dominant contributors to the band edge absorption? And (4) does a universal model exist for GaPN and GaAsN? Other issues that will be discussed are: how does one define the band gap for these materials, and what is the relevance of various theoretical band structure calculations to the experimentally measured parameters.