Effects of heavy Si doping on the structural and optical properties of n-GaN/AlN/Si(111) heterostructures

Abstract

n-GaN/ AlN heterostructures were grown by molecular beam epitaxy on Si(111) substrates.The GaN films were n-type doped with silicon and the effect of doping concentration on the structural and optical properties was studied. Si doping promotes a reduction of dislocation density as revealed by x-ray data analysis and Transmission Electron Microscopy. Furthermore, a decrease in the yellow band measured by Photoluminescence Spectroscopy was observed when silicon doping concentration was increased up to 1.7 × 10 ^19 atoms cm ^−3 . A particular mosaic structure was induced by the Si-doping as inferred from Rutherford Backscattering measurements. The crystal quality shows a small degradation for very heavily doped samples (1.3 × 10 ^20 atoms cm ^−3 ).

Keywords

• GaN
• molecular beam epitaxy
• heteroepitaxy
• silicon
• Si-doping
• crystal defects