Numerical modeling of hole interband tunneling in wurtzite GaN and SiC

Abstract

The time evolution of Bloch electrons (holes) moving in a constant electric field has been studied for GaN and 2H-SiC using a numerical model based on realistic band structures. The large band gap of GaN and the SiC polytypes provide much larger critical fields than in conventional semiconductors, which allows device operation at very high electric fields. At sufficiently high electric fields the carriers may change band during drift due to tunneling. GaN has a direct band gap, while the hexagonal SiC polytypes have indirect band gaps. In spite of this difference the valence band structure is very similar due to the wurtzite symmetry. In this work the GaN and the 2H-SiC polytype are considered as wurtzite prototype semiconductors in order to study valence band to band tunneling in wurtzite semiconductors for electric fields directed along the c axis. A large valence band to band tunneling probability was found for both materials at electric fields above 400 kV/cm. This shows the importance of considering band to band tunneling in studies of high field hole transport in wide band-gap hexagonal semiconductor materials. The proposed numerical approach can be used to enhance the interband tunneling models used in Monte Carlo simulation of carrier transport in hexagonal semiconductors.