Extremely high frequency Schottky diodes based on single GaN nanowires.

Gallium nitride (GaN) is one of the most promising materials for high-frequency devices owing to its prominent material properties. We report on the fabrication and study of a series of Schottky diodes in the ground-signal-ground topology based on individual GaN nanowires. The electrical characterization ofI-Vcurves demonstrated relatively high ideality factor value (about 6-9) in comparison to the planar Au/GaN diodes that can be attributed to the nanowire geometry. The effective barrier height in the studied structures was defined in the range of 0.25-0.4 eV. The small-signal frequency analysis was employed to study the dependency of the scattering parameters in the broad range from 0.1 to 40 GHz. The approximation fitting of the experimental data indicated the record high cutoff frequency of about 165.8 GHz.

Hydrogen passivation of the n-GaN nanowire/p-Si heterointerface.

The influence of hydrogen plasma treatment on the electrical and optical properties of vertical GaN nanowire (NW)/Si heterostructures synthesized via plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy is studied. The effect of the treatment is thoroughly studied via variation of the passivation duration. Photoluminescence investigation demonstrates that the passivation affects the doping of the GaN NWs. The samples were processed as photodiodes with a top transparent electrode to obtain detailed information about the n-GaN NWs/p-Si heterointerface under illumination. The electron beam induced current measurements demonstrated the absence of potential barriers between the active parts of the diode and the contacts, indicating ohmic behavior of the latter. I-V characteristics obtained in the dark and under illumination show that hydrogen can effectively passivate the recombination centers at the GaN NWs/Si heterointerface. The optimum passivation duration, providing improved electrical properties, is found to be 10 min within the studied passivation regimes. It is demonstrated that longer treatment causes degradation of the electrical properties. The discovered phenomenon is discussed in detail.

Effects of the surface preparation and buffer layer on the morphology, electronic and optical properties of the GaN nanowires on Si.

The role of Si (111) substrate surface preparation and buffer layer composition in the growth, electronic and optical properties of the GaN nanowires (NWs) synthesized via plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy is studied. A comparison study of GaN NWs growth on the bare Si (111) substrate, silicon nitride interlayer, predeposited AlN and GaO x buffer layers, monolayer thick Ga wetting layer and GaN seeding layer prepared by the droplet epitaxy is performed. It is demonstrated that the homogeneity and the morphology of the NW arrays drastically depend on the chosen buffer layer and surface preparation technique. An effect of the buffer and seeding layers on the nucleation and desorption is also discussed. The lowest NWs surface density of 14 µm-2 is obtained on AlN buffer layer and the highest density exceeding the latter value by more than an order of magnitude corresponds to the growth on the 0.3 ML thick Ga wetting layer. It is shown, that the highest NWs mean elongation rate is obtained with AlN buffer layer, while the lowest elongation rate corresponds to the bare Si (111) surface and it is twice as lower as the first case. It is found, that use of AlN buffer layer corresponds to the most homogeneous NWs array with the smallest length dispersion while the least homogeneous array corresponds to the bare Si substrate. Vertically aligned GaN NWs array on the wide bandgap GaO x semiconductor buffer layer grown by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition demonstrates its potential for electronic applications. Photoluminescence (PL) study of the synthesized samples is characterized by an intense optical response related to the excitons bound to neutral donors. The highest PL intensity is obtained in the sample with AlN buffer layer.