Hydrogen Can Passivate Carbon Impurities in Mg-Doped GaN

Degang Zhao,Desheng Jiang,Zongshun Liu,Jing Yang,Yuheng Zhang,Shuangtao Liu,Feng Liang,Jianjun Zhu

doi:10.1186/s11671-020-3263-9

Abstract

The effect of unintentionally doped hydrogen on the properties of Mg-doped p-GaN samples grown via metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is investigated through room temperature photoluminescence (PL) and Hall and secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS) measurements. It is found that there is an interaction between the residual hydrogen and carbon impurities. An increase of the carbon doping concentration can increase resistivity of the p-GaN and weaken blue luminescence (BL) band intensity. However, when hydrogen incorporation increased with carbon doping concentration, the increase of resistivity caused by carbon impurity is weaken and the BL band intensity is enhanced. This suggests that the co-doped hydrogen not only passivate MgGa, but also can passivate carbon impurities in Mg-doped p-GaN.

Highlights

Gallium nitride (GaN)-based third-generation semiconductor materials and their alloys have attracted great attention [1] due to their broad applications including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) [2,3,4] and laser diodes (LDs) [5–7]
Hydrogen and carbon are two main residual impurities existing in the metal-organic chemical deposition (MOCVD)-grown Mg-doped GaN epilayers
Zhang et al Nanoscale Research Letters (2020) 15:38 research has found that p-GaN films with both high concentration of hydrogen and carbon impurities show relatively low resistivity

Summary

Introduction

GaN-based third-generation semiconductor materials and their alloys have attracted great attention [1] due to their broad applications including light-emitting diodes (LEDs) [2,3,4] and laser diodes (LDs) [5–7]. Zhang et al Nanoscale Research Letters (2020) 15:38 research has found that p-GaN films with both high concentration of hydrogen and carbon impurities show relatively low resistivity. Three sets of Mg-doped GaN films with different concentrations of hydrogen and carbon residual impurities are investigated through secondary ion mass spectroscopy (SIMS), photoluminescence (PL), and Hall measurements.

Results

Conclusion