V. Avrutin

Hot electron effects on efficiency degradation in InGaN light emitting diodes and designs to mitigate them

Hot electrons and the associated ballistic and quasiballistic transport, heretofore neglected endemically, across the active regions of InGaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been incorporated into a first order simple model which explains the experimental observations of electron spillover and the efficiency degradation at high injection levels. The model is in good agreement with experiments wherein an adjustable barrier hot electron stopper, commonly called the electron blocking layer (EBL), is incorporated. The model is also in agreement with experiments wherein the electrons are cooled, eliminating hot electrons, inside a staircase electron injector (SEI) prior to their injection into the active region. Thermionic emission from the active region, even if one uses an uncharacteristically high junction temperature of 1000 K, fails to account for the carrier spillover and the experimental observations in our laboratory in samples with varying EBL barrier heights. The model has been successfully applied...

Impact of active layer design on InGaN radiative recombination coefficient and LED performance

The relative roles of radiative and nonradiative processes and the polarization field on the light emission from blue (∼425 nm) InGaN light emitting diodes (LEDs) have been studied. Single and multiple double heterostructure (DH) designs have been investigated with multiple DH structures showing improved efficiencies. Experimental results supported by numerical simulations of injection dependent electron and hole wavefunction overlap and the corresponding radiative recombination coefficients suggest that increasing the effective active region thickness by employing multiple InGaN DH structures separated by thin and low barriers is promising for LEDs with high efficiency retention at high injection. The use of thin and low barriers is crucial to enhance carrier transport across the active region. Although increasing the single DH thickness from 3 to 6 nm improves the peak external quantum efficiency (EQE) by nearly 3.6 times due to increased density of states and increased emitting volume, the internal qua...

AlGaN/GaN MOS transistors using crystalline ZrO2 as gate dielectric

Epitaxial growth of ZrO2 has been achieved on MOCVD-grown GaN(0001) templates by oxides molecular beam epitaxy using reactive H2O2 for oxygen and organometallic source for Zr. Utilizing a low temperature buffer layer followed by high temperature insitu annealing and high-temperature growth, monoclinic (100)-oriented ZrO2 thin films were obtained. The full width at half maximum of ZrO2 (100) rocking curve was 0.4 arc degree for 30-nm-thick films and the rms roughness for a 5&mgr;m by 5 &mgr;m AFM scan was 4 Å. The employment of epitaxial ZrO2 layer in the AlGaN/GaN heterojunction field effect trasnsistor as a gate dielectric has resulted in the increase of the saturation-current density and pinch-off voltage as well as in near symmetrical gate-drain I-V behavior.

Electrically and magnetically tunable phase shifters based on a barium strontium titanate-yttrium iron garnet layered structure

We report on the tuning of permittivity and permeability of a ferroelectric/ferromagnetic bilayer structure which can be used as a microwave phase shifter with two degrees of tuning freedom. The structure was prepared by the growth of a yttrium iron garnet (YIG) layer on a gadolinium gallium garnet substrate by liquid phase epitaxy, the growth of a barium strontium titanate (BST) layer on the YIG layer through pulsed laser deposition, and then the fabrication of a coplanar waveguide on the top of BST through e-beam evaporation and trilayer liftoff techniques. The phase shifters exhibit a differential phase shift of 38°/cm at 6 GHz through permittivity tuning under an applied electric field of ∼75 kV/cm and a static magnetic field of 1700 Oe. By tuning the permeability through the applied magnetic field we increase the differential phase shift to 52°/cm and simultaneously obtain a better match to the zero applied electric field condition, resulting in an improvement in the return loss from 22.4 to 24.9 dB....

Electron scattering mechanisms in GZO films grown on a-sapphire substrates by plasma-enhanced molecular beam epitaxy

We report on the mechanisms governing electron transport using a comprehensive set of ZnO layers heavily doped with Ga (GZO) grown by plasma-enhanced molecular-beam epitaxy on a-plane sapphire substrates with varying oxygen-to-metal ratios and Ga fluxes. The analyses were conducted by temperature dependent Hall measurements which were supported by microstructural investigations as well. Highly degenerate GZO layers with n > 5 × 1020 cm−3 grown under metal-rich conditions (reactive oxygen-to-metal ratio <1) show relatively larger grains (∼20–25 nm by x-ray diffraction) with low-angle boundaries parallel to the polar c-direction. For highly conductive GZO layers, ionized-impurity scattering with almost no compensation is the dominant mechanism limiting the mobility in the temperature range from 15 to 330 K and the grain-boundary scattering governed by quantum-mechanical tunnelling is negligible. However, due to the polar nature of ZnO having high crystalline quality, polar optical phonon scattering cannot b...

Properties of the main Mg-related acceptors in GaN from optical and structural studies

The luminescent properties of Mg-doped GaN have recently received particular attention, e.g., in the light of new theoretical calculations, where the deep 2.9 eV luminescence band was suggested to be the main optical signature of the substitutional MgGa acceptor, thus, having a rather large binding energy and a strong phonon coupling in optical transitions. We present new experimental data on homoepitaxial Mg-doped layers, which together with the previous collection of data give an improved experimental picture of the various luminescence features in Mg-doped GaN. In n-type GaN with moderate Mg doping (<1018 cm−3), the 3.466 eV ABE1 acceptor bound exciton and the associated 3.27 eV donor-acceptor pair (DAP) band are the only strong photoluminescence (PL) signals at 2 K, and are identified as related to the substitutional Mg acceptor with a binding energy of 0.225 ± 0.005 eV, and with a moderate phonon coupling strength. Interaction between basal plane stacking faults (BSFs) and Mg acceptors is suggested t...

Ballistic transport in InGaN-based LEDs: impact on efficiency

Heterojunction light-emitting diodes (LEDs) based on the InGaN/GaN system have improved considerably but still suffer from efficiency degradation at high injection levels which unless overcome would aggravate LED lighting. Although Auger recombination has been proposed as the genesis of the efficiency degradation, it appears that the premise of electron overflow and non-uniform distribution of carriers in the active region being the immediate impediment is gaining popularity. The lack of temperature sensitivity and sizeable impact of the barrier height provided by an electron blocking layer and the electron cooling layer prior to electron injection into the active region suggest that the new concept of hot electrons and ballistic/quasi-ballistic transport be invoked to account for the electron overflow. The electron overflow siphons off the electrons before they can participate in the recombination process. If the electrons are made to remain in the active region e.g. by cooling them prior to injection and/or blocking the overflow by an electron blocking layer, they would have to either recombine, radiatively or nonradiatively (e.g. Shockley–Read–Hall and Auger), or accumulate in the active region. The essence of the proposed overflow model is in good agreement with the experimental electroluminescence data obtained for m-plane and c-plane LEDs with/without electron blocking layers and with/without staircase electron injectors.

Large dielectric tuning and microwave phase shift at low electric field in epitaxial Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 on SrTiO3

Dielectric properties of annealed and as-grown ferroelectric Ba0.5Sr0.5TiO3 (BST) grown by pulsed laser deposition on sputtered BST seed layers on strontium titanate (STO) substrates were investigated at microwave frequencies in the realm of tunability of its dielectric constant as well as phase shifters based on this material. The as-grown layers were nearly fully relaxed with measured lattice parameters nearly identical to those of bulk BST. The tuning of the relative dielectric constant (∼1750 at zero bias at 10 GHz) of the annealed BST was found to be as high as 59% and 56% at 10 and 19 GHz, respectively. The analysis of the loss in the BST results in a measured tan δ of 0.02 for the annealed as well as the unannealed films at a frequency of 18 GHz. Phase shifters also exhibited high tuning with differential phase shift figures of merit of 35 and 55°/dB at a field of 60 kV/cm at 10 and 19 GHz, respectively. Serendipitously, most of the tuning occurs at low fields, and thus we propose a new figure of m...

About the Cu-related green luminescence band in ZnO

Cu-related green luminescence (GL) band in n-type ZnO layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy on sapphire and a bulk ZnO sample grown by hydrothermal method have been studied with above-bandgap excitation. Annealing of the samples in air at temperatures above 600°C resulted in an increase in the concentration of CuZn acceptors, followed by a dramatic enhancement of the Cu-related GL band peaking at 2.45eV, and a characteristic fine structure. The GL band quenched at temperatures between 250 and 500K due to escape of holes from the excited state of the CuZn acceptor to the valence band. Energy position of this state in the bandgap of ZnO and its capture cross section for holes were estimated as 0.38eV and 2×10−13cm2, respectively.

Lattice parameters and electronic structure of BeMgZnO quaternary solid solutions: Experiment and theory

BexMgyZn1−x−yO semiconductor solid solutions are attractive for UV optoelectronics and electronic devices owing to their wide bandgap and capability of lattice-matching to ZnO. In this work, a combined experimental and theoretical study of lattice parameters, bandgaps, and underlying electronic properties, such as changes in band edge wavefunctions in BexMgyZn1−x−yO thin films, is carried out. Theoretical ab initio calculations predicting structural and electronic properties for the whole compositional range of materials are compared with experimental measurements from samples grown by plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy on (0001) sapphire substrates. The measured a and c lattice parameters for the quaternary alloys BexMgyZn1−x with x = 0−0.19 and y = 0–0.52 are within 1%–2% of those calculated using generalized gradient approximation to the density functional theory. Additionally, composition independent ternary BeZnO and MgZnO bowing parameters were determined for a and c lattice parameters and the b...