Thermal admittance spectroscopy of Mg-doped GaN Schottky diodes

Thermal admittance spectroscopy measurements at temperatures ranging from room temperature to 90 K are performed on Schottky structures based on Mg-doped GaN layers grown by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy on sapphire. The analysis of the experimental data is made by a detailed theoretical study of the steady-state and small-signal electrical characteristics of the structures. Numerical simulations are based on the solution of the basic semiconductor equations for the structure consisting of two Schottky diodes connected back to back by a conduction channel formed by the GaN layer. The description explicitly includes the Mg-related acceptor level, with its temperature- and position-dependent incomplete occupation state, leading to a dynamic exchange with the valence band. It fully reproduces the variations with temperature of the capacitance-- frequency and conductance over frequency curves, allowing to give for all temperature ranges the origin of the various contributions to the junction capacitance and of the microscopic mechanisms responsible for the capacitance--frequency cutoff. Series resistance effects are shown to be dominant at temperatures above 230 K, whereas the Mg-related acceptor level governs the electrical behavior below 230 K. The existence of a second acceptor level with an activation energy of several tens of meV is revealed from the analysis of the characteristics at low temperature. An optimized fitting procedure based on the comparison of the electrical characteristics obtained from the numerical simulations to the experimental data allows one to determine the microscopic parameters describing the structure, among which the acceptor activation energies, thermal capture cross sections, concentrations, and the Schottky contact barrier heights are the most important ones. The obtained activation energy of the Mg-acceptor level of 210 meV is by a factor of 2 larger than that obtained from a classical Arrhenius plot, showing that a complete description of Mg-doped GaN junctions requires the correct treatment of the Mg level, acting as a dopant and as deep impurity, as well as the inclusion of series resistance effects.