Electrical and optical properties of p-SiC/n-GaN heterostructures

We report on the optical, electrical and structural properties of GaN films heteroepitaxially grown by low pressure chemical vapor deposition on 6H-SiC substrates. We employed photoluminescence (PL), Hall effect measurements, scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and X-ray analysis to determine the quality of our films. Heterojunction diodes were fabricated on p-type SiC and characterized by temperature dependent current–voltage and capacitance–voltage techniques. The results are interpreted within the thermionic emission model and the barrier found is attributed to the conduction band offset between 6H-SiC and wurtzite GaN. The diodes show electroluminescence of the donor-acceptor pair recombination type of 6H-SiC at room temperature. By analysis of the injection behavior we can interpret our data, determining the high valence band offset between 6H-SiC and α-GaN to 0.67 eV. This high valence band offset favors applications for hetero-bipolar transistors (HBT).