Point defects and dopants of boron arsenide from first-principles calculations: Donor compensation and doping asymmetry

Abstract

We apply hybrid density functional theory calculations to identify the formation energies and thermodynamic charge transition levels of native point defects, common impurities, and shallow dopants in BAs. We find that AsB antisites, boron-related defects such as VB, BAs, and Bi-VB complexes, and antisite pairs are the dominant intrinsic defects. Native BAs is expected to exhibit p-type conduction due to the acceptor-type characteristics of VB and BAs. Among the common impurities we explored, we found that C substitutional defects and H interstitials have relatively low formation energies and are likely to contribute free holes. Interstitial hydrogen is surprisingly also found to be stable in the neutral charge state. BeB, SiAs, and GeAs are predicted to be excellent shallow acceptors with low ionization energy (<0.03 eV) and negligible compensation by other point defects considered here. On the other hand, donors such as SeAs, TeAs SiB, and GeB have a relatively large ionization energy (∼0.15 eV) and are likely to be passivated by native defects such as BAs and VB, as well as CAs, Hi, and HB. The hole and electron doping asymmetry originates from the heavy effective mass of the conduction band due to its boron orbital character, as well as from boron-related intrinsic defects that compensate donors.