Current transport property of n-GaN/n-6H-SiC heterojunction: Influence of interface states

Heterostructures of n-GaN/n-6H-SiC grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) and molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) are characterized with the current-voltage (I-V), capacitance-voltage (C-V), and deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) techniques. Using different contact configurations, the I-V results reveal a rectifying barrier in the n-GaN/n-6H-SiC heterostructures. When GaN is negatively biased, the current is exponentially proportional to the applied voltage with the built-in barrier being 0.4-1.1 eV for the HVPE samples and 0.5 eV for the MBE sample. DLTS measurements reveal intense band-like deep level states in the interfacial region of the heterostructure, and the Fermi-level pinning by these deep level defects is invoked to account for the interfacial rectifying barrier of the heterostructures. (C) 2005 American Institute of Physics.