Implanted impurities in wide band gap semiconductors

Abstract

Wide band gap semiconductors, mainly GaN, have experienced much attention due to their application in photonic devices and high-power or high-temperature electronic devices. Especially the synthesis of InxGa1-xN alloys has been studied extensively because of their use in LEDs and laser diodes. Here, In is added during the growth process and devices are already very successful on a commercial scale. Indium in nitride ternary and quaternary alloys plays a special role; however, the mechanisms leading to more efficient light emission in In-containing nitrides are still under debate. Therefore, the behavior of In in GaN and AlN, the nitride semiconductor with the largest bandgap is an important field of study. In is also an important impurity in another wide band gap semiconductor - the II-VI compound ZnO where it acts as an n-type dopant. In this context the perturbed angular correlation technique using implantation of the probe 111In is a unique tool to study the immediate lattice environment of In in the wurtzite lattice of these wide band gap semiconductors. For the production of GaN and ZnO based electronic circuits one would normally apply the ion implantation technique, which is the most widely used method for selective area doping of semiconductors like Si and GaAs. However, this technique suffers from the fact that it invariably produces severe lattice damage in the implanted region, which in nitride semiconductors has been found to be very difficult to recover by annealing. The perturbed angular correlation technique is employed to monitor the damage recovery around implanted atoms and the properties of hitherto known impurity - defect complexes will be described and compared to proposed structure models.