Growth and Properties of GaN/Si Heterojunction

Abstract

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a highly promising wide band gap semiconductor with applications in high power electronic and optoelectronic devices. Thin films of GaN are most commonly grown in the hexagonal wurtzite structure on sapphire substrates. Growth of GaN onto silicon substrates offers a very attractive opportunity to incorporate GaN devices onto silicon based integrated circuits. Although direct epitaxial growth of GaN films on Si substrates is a difficult task (mainly due to the 17% lattice mismatch present), substantial progress in the crystal quality can be achieved using a buffer layer. A full characterization of the quality of the material needs to be assessed by a combination of different techniques. In this work, a detailed characterization study of GaN thin film grown on Si(111) with AlN buffer layer by low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (LP-MOCVD) was carried out. Post deposition analysis includes scanning electron microscopy (SEM), x-ray diffraction (XRD), Hall and infrared (IR) spectroscopy techniques. The IR spectra were compared to the calculated spectra generated with a damped single harmonic oscillator model. Through this method, a complete set of reststrahlen parameters (such as ε∞, S, wTO, γ) of the GaN epilayer were obtained. Our results show that the GaN film has a single crystalline structure. Current-voltage characteristics (I-V) of this GaN/Si heterojunction were measured at room temperature. Rectification behavior was observed for this anisotype heterojunction. The electrical characteristics of Ni Schottky barriers on this unintentionally doped n-type film were also investigated. The barrier height of Ni/GaN Schottky barriers has been determined to be 0.93 eV by I-V measurement.