Low‐Temperature Electrical Transport Properties of Molecular Beam Epitaxy‐Grown Mg‐Doped GaN Subjected to a High‐Temperature Annealing Process

Abstract

In the case of molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), the Mg acceptors are electrically active in the as‐grown material and a priori no additional annealing procedure is necessary. However, there are still some peculiarities in the electrical properties of ammonia‐process grown GaN:Mg and some annealing effect can be observed. Additionally, the character of weak temperature dependence in the vicinity of room temperature suggests that to describe the conduction process an additional conduction channel not related to the free carriers in the valence band must be taken into account. For these reasons, this article presents the results of low‐temperature resistivity and Hall Effect studies of Mg‐doped, ammonia‐process‐grown GaN. The studied samples are grown on low‐temperature buffers of GaN deposited on a sapphire substrate. High‐temperature annealing process (≈800 K) is carried out for all of them. The temperature dependences of the electrical transport properties before and after the annealing procedure are especially investigated at temperatures ranging from 10 up to 300 K. It is found that the low temperatures transport properties are sensitive to the annealing procedure and to describe the observed effects the hopping phenomena must be taken into account.