Raman spectroscopy based measurements of carrier concentration in n-type GaN nanowires grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

The carrier concentration in as-grown ensembles of n-type GaN nanowires was determined by Raman spectroscopy of the coupled longitudinal phonon–plasmon (LPP+) mode and modeling of the carrier concentration dependence of the LPP+ frequency. The Raman measurements and analyses enabled estimation of the carrier concentration in single-nanowire devices fabricated from the as-grown ensembles. The nanowires were grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy in either of the two growth systems. Twelve samples were examined, of which 11 samples were Si-doped and one was undoped. The Raman-measured carrier concentrations in the Si-doped samples ranged from (5.28 ± 1.19) × 1016 cm−3 to (6.16 ± 0.35) × 1017 cm−3. For a subset of samples grown with varying Si cell temperature, from 1125 °C to 1175 °C, the carrier concentration was found to be an Arrhenius function of Si cell temperature, with activation energy of 6.281±0.011 eV. Co-illumination by an above band gap UV laser (325 nm, excitation intensity = 0.7 W/cm2 or 4.5 W/cm2) induced small increases in carrier concentration, relative to illumination by the Raman excitation laser alone (633 nm, excitation intensity ≈100 kW/cm2). The lowest Si-doped sample showed the largest increase in carrier concentration, (6.3 ± 4.8) × 1015 cm−3 with UV excitation intensity of 0.7 W/cm2. These results imply that, even in the absence of UV illumination, surface depletion does not have a significant effect on the Raman carrier concentration measurements. Immersion in a high-dielectric-constant oil (ε = 2.24) caused downshifts of similar magnitude in the LPP+ frequencies of undoped and doped nanowires. This result implies that the LPP+ mode has bulk plasmon rather than surface plasmon character, because immersion in a high-dielectric-constant medium is predicted to cause a large decrease in the surface plasmon frequency, which would induce a larger LPP+ downshift in doped than undoped nanowires. A surface optical (SO) phonon peak was observed in each sample in air at ≈96.4% of the LPP+ frequency. The SO frequency decreased to ≈93.1% of the LPP+ frequency upon oil immersion, as predicted by a simple dielectric model.