Phonon Decay in GaN and AlN and Self-Heating in III-N Devices

Abstract

ABSTRACTWe report studies of the temperature dependence of Raman lines in high quality GaN and AlN. The temperature dependence of the phonon energies and linewidths are used to produce consistent phonon decay properties of zone center optic phonons. In GaN we observe the E22 phonon to decay into three phonons, while the A1(LO) phonon is well described according to the so-called Ridley process – one TO and one LA phonon. For AlN the E22 phonon decays by two phonon emission and the A1(LO) line also exhibits a dependence consistent with the Ridley process. Along with the phonon decay processes, it is important in each case to take into account the contribution of the thermal expansion, including the temperature dependence, to describe observed temperature shifts in the phonon properties.