Electronic transport in degenerate (100) scandium nitride thin films on magnesium oxide substrates

Abstract

Scandium nitride (ScN) is a degenerate n-type semiconductor with very high carrier concentrations, low resistivity, and carrier mobilities comparable to those of transparent conducting oxides such as zinc oxide. Because of its small lattice mismatch to gallium nitride (GaN), <1%, ScN is considered a very promising material for future GaN based electronics. Impurities are the source of the degeneracy. Yet, which specific impurities are the cause has remained in contention. ScN thin films of various thicknesses were grown on magnesium oxide substrates in a (001) orientation using reactive magnetron sputtering across a range of deposition conditions. X-ray diffraction was used to verify crystal orientation. Film thicknesses ranging from 39 to 85 nm were measured using scanning electron microscopy. The electronic transport properties of the films were characterized using Hall-effect measurements at temperatures ranging from 10 to 320 K. At 10 K, the electron concentration varies from 4.4 × 1020 to 1.5 × 1021 cm−3, resistivity from 2.1 × 10−4 to 5.0 × 10−5 Ω·cm, and Hall mobility from 66 to 97 cm2/V·s. Secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) was used to determine film compositions. Finally, density functional theory (DFT) was used to compute the activation energies for various point defects including nitrogen and scandium vacancies and oxygen and fluorine substituting for nitrogen. For both oxygen and fluorine substitution, the energies were negative, indicating spontaneous formation. Nevertheless, the combined results of the Hall, SIMS, and DFT strongly suggest that oxygen substitution is the primary mechanism behind the high carrier concentration in these samples.