Evidence of type-II band alignment in III-nitride semiconductors: experimental and theoretical investigation for In 0.17 Al 0.83 N/GaN heterostructures

Jiaming Wang; Fujun Xu; Xia Zhang; Wei An; Xin-Zheng Li; Jie Song; Weikun Ge; Guangshan Tian; Jing Lu; Xinqiang Wang; Ning Tang; Zhijian Yang; Wei Li; Weiying Wang; Peng Jin; Yonghai Chen; Bo Shen

doi:10.1038/srep06521

Evidence of type-II band alignment in III-nitride semiconductors: experimental and theoretical investigation for In 0.17 Al 0.83 N/GaN heterostructures

Sci Rep. 2014 Oct 6:4:6521. doi: 10.1038/srep06521.

Authors

Jiaming Wang¹, Fujun Xu¹, Xia Zhang¹, Wei An¹, Xin-Zheng Li², Jie Song¹, Weikun Ge³, Guangshan Tian¹, Jing Lu¹, Xinqiang Wang², Ning Tang¹, Zhijian Yang¹, Wei Li⁴, Weiying Wang⁴, Peng Jin⁴, Yonghai Chen⁴, Bo Shen²

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Collaboration Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100084, China.
³ 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
⁴ Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science and Beijing Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.

Abstract

Type-II band alignment structure is coveted in the design of photovoltaic devices and detectors, since it is beneficial for the transport of photogenerated carriers. Regrettably, for group-III-nitride wide bandgap semiconductors, all existing devices are limited to type-I heterostructures, owing to the unavailable of type-II ones. This seriously restricts the designing flexibility for optoelectronic devices and consequently the relevant performance of this material system. Here we show a brandnew type-II band alignment of the lattice-matched In 0.17 Al 0.83 N/GaN heterostructure from the perspective of both experimental observations and first-principle theoretical calculations. The band discontinuity is dominated by the conduction band offset ΔEC, with a small contribution from the valence band offset ΔEV which equals 0.1 eV (with E(AlInN(VBM) being above E(GaN)(VBM)). Our work may open up new prospects to realize high-performance III-Nitrides optoelectronic devices based on type-II energy band engineering.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't