Interband Tunneling for Hole Injection in III-Nitride Ultraviolet Emitters

Zhang, Yuewei; Krishnamoorthy, Sriram; Johnson, Jared M.; Akyol, Fatih; Allerman, Andrew A.; Moseley, Michael William; Armstrong, Andrew; Hwang, Jinwoo; Rajan, Siddharth

doi:10.1063/1.4917529

Interband Tunneling for Hole Injection in III-Nitride Ultraviolet Emitters

Journal Article · Thu Apr 09 00:00:00 EDT 2015 · Applied Physics Letters

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4917529· OSTI ID:1235262

Zhang, Yuewei ^[1]; Krishnamoorthy, Sriram ^[1]; Johnson, Jared M. ^[1]; Akyol, Fatih ^[1]; Allerman, Andrew A. ^[2]; Moseley, Michael William ^[2]; Armstrong, Andrew ^[2]; Hwang, Jinwoo ^[1]; Rajan, Siddharth ^[1]

The Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States)
Sandia National Lab. (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Low p-type conductivity and high contact resistance remain a critical problem in wide band gap AlGaN-based ultraviolet light emitters due to the high acceptor ionization energy. In this work, interband tunneling is demonstrated for non-equilibrium injection of holes through the use of ultra-thin polarization-engineered layers that enhance tunneling probability by several orders of magnitude over a PN homojunction. Al_0.3Ga_0.7N interband tunnel junctions with a lowresistance of 5.6 × 10^-4 Ω cm² were obtained and integrated on ultraviolet light emitting diodes.Tunnel injection of holes was used to realize GaN-free ultraviolet light emitters with bottom and top n-type Al_0.3Ga_0.7N contacts. At an emission wavelength of 327 nm, stable output power of 6 W/cm² at a current density of 120 A/cm² with a forward voltage of 5.9 V was achieved. Our demonstration of efficient interband tunneling could enable device designs for higher efficiency ultraviolet emitters.

View Accepted Manuscript (DOE)

Research Organization:: Sandia National Laboratories (SNL-NM), Albuquerque, NM (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE; USDOE National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC04-94AL85000

OSTI ID:: 1235262

Alternate ID(s):: OSTI ID: 1420458

Report Number(s):: SAND2015--3693J; 583782

Journal Information:: Applied Physics Letters, Journal Name: Applied Physics Letters Journal Issue: 14 Vol. 106; ISSN 0003-6951

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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