On Compensation and Impurities in State-of-the-Art GaN Epilayers Grown on Sapphire

A comparison between 300 K electron transport data for state-of-the-art wurtzite GaN grown on sapphire substrates and corresponding theoretical calculations shows a large difference, with experimental mobility less than the predicted mobility for a given carrier concentration. The comparison seems to imply that GaN films are greatly compensated, but the discrepancy may also be due to the poorly known values of the materials parameters used in the calculations. In this work, recent analysis of transport and SIMS measurements on silicon-doped GaN films are shown to imply that the compensation, NA/ND, is less than 0.3. In addition, the determination of an activation energy of 34 meV in a GaN film doped to a level of 6×1016 cm−3 suggests either that a second, native donor exists in the doped films at a level of between 6×1017 cm−3 and 1×1017 cm−3, or that the activation energy of Si in GaN is dependent on the concentration, being influenced by impurity banding or some other physical effect. GaN films grown without silicon doping are highly resistive.