The practical design of GaN-based Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) incorporating a field plate (FP) structure necessitates an understanding of their working mechanism and optimization criteria. In this work, the influences of the parameters of FPs upon breakdown of the diode are investigated in detail and the design rules of FP structures for GaN-based SBDs are presented for a wide scale of material and device parameters. By comparing three representative dielectric materials (SiO2, Si3N4 and Al2O3) selected for fabricating FPs, it is found that the product of dielectric permittivity and critical field strength of a dielectric material could be used as an index to predict its potential performance for FP applications.
In this work, the breakdown characteristics of AlGaN/GaN planar Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) fabricated on the silicon substrate are investigated. The breakdown voltage (BV) of the SBDs first increases as a function of the anodeto-cathode distance and then tends to saturate at larger inter-electrode spacing. The saturation behavior of the BV is likely caused by the vertical breakdown through the intrinsic GaN buffer layer on silicon, which is supported by the post-breakdown primary leakage path analysis with the emission microscopy. Surface passivation and field plate termination are found effective to suppress the leakage current and enhance the BV of the SBDs. A high BV of 601 V is obtained with a low on-resistance of 3.15 mΩ·cm^2.
Solar-blind ultraviolet (UV) band-pass filter has significant value in many scientific, commercial, and military appli- cations, in which the detection of weak UV signal against a strong background of solar radiation is required. In this work, a solar-blind filter is designed based on the concept of "transparent metal". The filter consisting of Al/SiO2 multilayers could exhibit a high transmission in the solar-blind wavelength region and a wide stopband extending from near-ultraviolet to infrared wavelength range. The central wavelength, bandwidth, Q factor, and rejection ratio of the passband are numerically studied as a function of individual layer thickness and multilayer period.
The efficiency droop behaviors of GaN-based green light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are studied as a function of temperature from 300 K to 480 K. The overall quantum efficiency of the green LEDs is found to degrade as temperature increases, which is mainly caused by activation of new non-radiative recombination centers within the LED active layer. Meanwhile, the external quantum efficiency of the green LEDs starts to decrease at low injection current level (1 A/cm2 ) with a temperature-insensitive peak-efficiency-current. In contrast, the peak-efficiency-current of a control GaN-based blue LED shows continuous up-shift at higher temperatures. Around the onset point of efficiency droop, the electroluminescence spectra of the green LEDs also exhibit a monotonic blue-shift of peak energy and a reduction of full width at half maximum as injection current increases. Carrier delocalization is believed to play an important role in causing the efficiency droop in GaN-based green LEDs.