Influence of dislocations in the GaN layer on the electrical properties of an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure

Abstract

This paper reports on a comparative study of the spatial distributions of the electrical, optical, and structural properties in an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure. Edge dislocation density in the GaN template layer is shown to decrease in the regions of the wafer where the heterostructure sheet resistance increases and the GaN photoluminescence band-edge energy peak shifts to a high wavelength. This phenomenon is found to be attributed to the local compressive strain surrounding edge dislocation, which will generate a local piezoelectric polarization field in the GaN layer in the opposite direction to the piezoelectric polarization field in the AlGaN layer and thus help to increase the two-dimensional electron gas concentration.