Maximizing electrical doping while reducing material cracking in III-V nitride semiconductor devices
First Claim
1. A device comprising:
- a substrate;
a compound device layer of (Alx Ga1-x)y In1-y N, positioned over the substrate, including a first and second sub-layer, wherein each sub-layer has an associated composition, thickness, and doping level; and
an active layer, positioned over the compound device layer;
wherein the composition and thickness associated with each of the sub-layers is adjusted to minimize material cracking, for each sub-layer the doping level is inversely proportional to the thickness.
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Abstract
N-type doping in III-V-nitride semiconductor compounds, i.e. GaN-based compounds such as GaN, AlGaN, AlInN, InGaN, or AlGaInN, can be optimized to improve N-contact electrical resistance, carrier injection, forward voltage, and recombination characteristics without inducing cracking of the device layers. The N-type layer is constructed of sub-layers such that an N-type sub-layer is provided for each desired characteristic or property. The thickness of each sub-layer is carefully selected to avoid material cracking: the higher the required doping, the smaller the corresponding thickness. In illustration, the buffer layer of a light emitting device (LED) has three sub-layers. The first sub-layer is lightly doped to avoid cracking and is grown to the desired thickness for good material quality. The second sub-layer is heavily doped to provide good N-contact and electrical resistivity characteristics and is kept correspondingly as thin as necessary to avoid material cracking. The third sub-layer is doped to the desired level to provide optimum carrier injection and pair recombination in the active layer of the device.
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Citations
21 Claims
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1. A device comprising:
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a substrate; a compound device layer of (Alx Ga1-x)y In1-y N, positioned over the substrate, including a first and second sub-layer, wherein each sub-layer has an associated composition, thickness, and doping level; and an active layer, positioned over the compound device layer; wherein the composition and thickness associated with each of the sub-layers is adjusted to minimize material cracking, for each sub-layer the doping level is inversely proportional to the thickness. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
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Specification