• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.22 no.8
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• pp.654-658
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• 2009

For investigation of surface leakage currrent of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures through etched GaN buffer surface and mesa wall, three kind of surface-leakage-test-patterns were fabricated. and we measured the surface leakage current of each patterns. In result of our work, the surface leakage current of pattern of which Schottky contact is formed on etched mesa wall is the largest. the leakage current through schottky contact on etched mesa wall is predominant in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.04b
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• pp.89-90
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• 2009

Three kind of surface-leakage-test-patterns were fabricated and measured in order to investigate the surface leakage current of AlGaN/GaN heterostructures through etched GaN buffer surface and mesa wall. The pattern which contain the mesa wall has the largest surface leakage current among them. The leakage current due to the mesa wall is predominant source of the leakage current of AlGaN/GaN devices.

• JSTS:Journal of Semiconductor Technology and Science
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.96-101
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• 2003

Direct evidence on the incorporation of high concentration of oxygen into undoped AlGaN layers for the AlGaN/GaN heterostuctures is provided by scanning photoemission microscopy using synchrotron radiation. In-situ annealing at $1000^{\circ}C$ resulted in a significant increase in the oxygen concentration at the AlGaN surface due to the predominant formation of Al-O bonds. The oxygen incorporation into the AlGaN layers resulting from the high reactivity of Al to oxygen can enhance the tunneling-assisted transport of electrons at the metal/AlGaN interface, leading to the reduction of the Schottky barrier height and the increase of the sheet carrier concentration near the AlGaN/GaN interface.

• Korean Journal of Materials Research
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.460-466
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• 1999

The deep level electron traps in AP-MOCVD GaAs/undoped Al\ulcornerGa\ulcornerAs/n-type GaAs heterostructures have been investigated by means of Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy DLTS). In terms of the experimental procedure, GaAs/undoped Al\ulcornerGa\ulcornerAs/n-type GaAs heterostructures were deposited on 2" undoped semi-insulating GaAs wafers by the AP-MOCVD method at $650^{\circ}C$ with TMGa, AsH3, TMAl, and SiH4 gases. The n-type GaAs conduction layers were doped with Si to the target concentration of about 2$\times$10\ulcornercm\ulcorner. The Al content was targeted to x=0.5 and the thicknesses of Al\ulcornerGa\ulcornerAs layers were targeted from 0 to 40 nm. In order to investigate the electrical characteristics, an array of Schottky diodes was built on the heterostructures by the lift-off process and Al thermal evaporation. Among the key results of this experiment, the deep level electron traps at 0.742~0.777 eV and 0.359~0.680 eV were observed in the heterostructures; however, only a 0.787 eV level was detected in n-type GaAs samples without the Al\ulcornerGa\ulcornerAs overlayer. It may be concluded that the 0.787 eV level is an EL2 level and that the 0.742~0.777 eV levels are related to EL2 and residual oxygen impurities which are usually found in MOCVD GaAs and Al\ulcornerGa\ulcornerAs materials grown at $630~660^{\circ}C$. The 0.359~0.680 eV levels may be due to the defects related with the al-O complex and residual Si impurities which are also usually known to exist in the MOCVD materials. Particularly, as the Si doping concentration in the n-type GaAs layer increased, the electron trap concentrations in the heterostructure materials and the magnitude of the C-V hysteresis in the Schottky diodes also increased, indicating that all are intimately related.ated.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.15 no.7
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• pp.591-596
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• 2002

In this work, epitaxial GaN is grown on sapphire substrate in AlGaN/GaN heterostructures. Deliberate oxygen doping of GaN grown by MOVPE has been studied. The electron concentration increased as a function of the square root of the oxygen partial Pressure. Oxygen is a shallow donor with a thermal ionization energy of $27\pm2 meV$ measured by temperature dependent Hall effects. A compensation ratio of $\theta$=0.3~0.4 was determined from Hall effect measurements. The formation energy of $O_N$ of $E^F$ =1.3eV determined from the experimental data, is lower than the theoretically predicted vague.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 2009.06a
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• pp.23-23
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• 2009

GaN-based nitride semiconductors have attracted considerable attention in high-brightness light-emitting-diodes (LEDs) and laser diodes (LDs) covering from green to ultraviolet spectral range. LED and LD heterostructures are usually grown on (0001)-$Al_2O_3$. The large lattice mismatch between $Al_2O_3$ substrates and the GaN layers leads to a high density of defects(dislocations and stacking faults). Moreover, Ga and N atoms are arranged along the polar [0001] crystallographic direction, which leads to spontaneous polarization. In addition, in the InGaN/GaN MQWs heterostructures, stress applied along the same axis can also give rise to piezoelectric polarization. The total polarization, which is the sum of spontaneous and piezoelectric polarizations, is aligned along the [0001] direction of the wurtzite heterostructures. The change in the total polarization across the heterolayers results in high interface charge densities and spatial separation of the electron and hole wave functions, redshifting the photoluminescence peak and decreasing the peak intensity. The effect of polarization charges in the GaN-based heterostructures can be eliminated by growing along the non-polar [$11\bar{2}0$] (a-axis) or [$1\bar{1}00$] (m-axis) orientation instead of thecommonly used polar [0001] (c-axis). For non-polar GaN growth on non-polar substrates, the GaN films have high density of planar defects (basal stacking fault BSFs, prismatic stacking fault PSFs), because the SFs are formed on the basal plane (c-plane) due to their low formation energy. A significant reduction in defect density was recently achieved by applying blocking layer such as SiN, AlN, and AlGaN in non-polar GaN. In this work, we were performed systematic studies of the defects in the nonpolar GaN by conventional and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.34-39
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• 2008

We have investigated the characteristics of $Al_{0.55}Ga_{0.45}N$/GaN heterostructures with and without low-temperature (LT) AlN interlayer grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition. The structural and optical properties were systematically studied by Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), optical microscopy (OMS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and photoluminescence (PL). The Al content (x) of 55% and the structural properties of $Al_xGa_{1-x}N$/GaN heterostructures were investigated by using RBS and XRD, respectively. We carried out OMS and SEM experiments and obtained a decrease of the crack network in $Al_{0.55}Ga_{0.45}N$ layer with LT-AlN interlayer. A two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG)-related PL peak located at ${\sim}3.437eV$ was observed at 10 K for $Al_{0.55}Ga_{0.45}N$/GaN with LT-AlN interlayer. The 2DEG-related emission intensity gradually decreased with increasing temperature and disappeared at temperatures around 100 K. In addition, with increasing the excitation power above 3.0 mW, two 2DEG-related PL peaks were observed at ${\sim}3.411$ and ${\sim}3.437eV$. The observed lower-energy and higher-energy side 2DEG peaks were attributed to the transitions from the sub-band level and the Fermi energy level of 2DEG at the AlGaN/LT-AlN/GaN heterointerface, respectively.

• Journal of the Korean Vacuum Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.359-364
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• 2008

We have investigated optical and structural properties of $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N$/GaN and $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N/GaN/Al_{0.15}Ga_{0.85}N/GaN$ heterostructures (HSs) grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, by means of Hall measurement, high-resolution X-ray diffraction, and temperature- and excitation power-dependent photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. A strong GaN band edge emission and its longitudinal optical phonon replicas were observed for all the samples. At 10 K, a 2DEG-related PL peak located at ${\sim}\;3.445\;eV$ was observed for $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N$/GaN HS, while two 2DEG peaks at ${\sim}\;3.42$ and ${\sim}\;3.445\;eV$ were observed for $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N/GaN/Al_{0.15}Ga_{0.85}N/GaN$ HS due to the additional $Al_{0.15}Ga_{0.85}N$ layers. Moreover, the emission intensity of the 2DEG peak was higher in $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N/GaN/Al_{0.15}Ga_{0.85}N/GaN$ HS than in $Al_{0.3}Ga_{0.7}N$/GaN HS probably due to an effective confinement of the photo-excited holes by the additional $Al_{0.15}Ga_{0.85}N$ layers. The 2DEG-related emission intensity decreased with increasing temperature and disappeared at temperatures above 150 K. To investigate the origin of the new 2DEG peaks, the energy-band structure for multiple AlGaN/GaN HSs were simulated and compared with the experimental data. As a result, the observed high- and low-energy peaks of 2DEG can be attributed to the spatially-separated 2DEG emissions formed at different AlGaN/GaN heterointerfaces.

• Electronic Materials Letters
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.784-792
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• 2018

In this letter, a standard deviation based optimization technique has been applied on High Resolution X-ray Diffraction symmetric and asymmetric scan results to accurately determine the Aluminum molar fraction and lattice relaxation of Molecular Beam Epitaxy grown compositionally graded Aluminum Gallium Nitride (AlGaN)/Aluminum Nitride/Gallium Nitride (GaN) heterostructures. Mathews-Blakeslee critical thickness model has been applied in an alternative way to determine the partially relaxed AlGaN epilayer thicknesses. The coupling coefficient determination has been presented in a different perspective involving sample tilt method by off set between the asymmetric planes of GaN and AlGaN. Sample tilt is further increased to determine mosaic tilt ranging between $0.01^{\circ}$ and $0.1^{\circ}$.

• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.155-155
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• 2006