Epitaxial Gd2O3 on GaN and AlGaN: a potential candidate for metal oxide semiconductor based transistors on Si for high power application

Abstract

We report structural and electrical properties of hexagonal Gd2O3 grown epitaxially on GaN/Si (1 1 1) and AlGaN/GaN/Si(1 1 1) virtual substrates. GaN and AlGaN/GaN heterostructures were grown on Si(1 1 1) substrates by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PA-MBE), whereas the Gd2O3 layer was grown by the pulsed laser ablation (PLA) technique. Initial structural characterizations show that Gd2O3 grown on III-nitride layers by PLA, exhibit a hexagonal structure with an epitaxial relationship as and . X-ray photoelectron measurements of the valence bands revealed that Gd2O3 exhibits band offsets of 0.97 eV and 0.4 eV, for GaN and Al0.3Ga0.7N, respectively. Electrical measurements such as capacitance–voltage and leakage current characteristics further confirm that epi-Gd2O3 on III-nitrides could be a potential candidate for future metal-oxide-semiconductor (MOS)-based transistors also for high power applications in radio frequency range.