Iron as a source of efficient Shockley-Read-Hall recombination in GaN
- Author(s)
- Darshana Wickramaratne, Jimmy-Xuan Shen, Cyrus E. Dreyer, Manuel Engel, Martijn Marsman, Georg Kresse, Saulius Marcinkevicius, Audrius Alkauskas, Chris G. Van de Walle
- Abstract
Transition metal impurities are known to adversely affect the efficiency of electronic and optoelectronic devices by introducing midgap defect levels that can act as efficient Shockley-Read-Hall centers. Iron impurities in GaN do not follow this pattern: their defect level is close to the conduction band and hence far from midgap. Using hybrid functional first-principles calculations, we uncover the electronic properties of Fe and we demonstrate that its high efficiency as a nonradiative center is due to a recombination cycle involving excited states. Unintentional incorporation of iron impurities at modest concentrations (10(15) cm(-3)) leads to nanosecond nonradiative recombination lifetimes, which can be detrimental for the efficiency of electronic and optoelectronic devices.
- Organisation(s)
- Computational Materials Physics
- External organisation(s)
- University of California, Santa Barbara, Rutgers University, KTH - Royal Institute of Technology, Center for Physical Sciences and Technology
- Journal
- Applied Physics Letters
- Volume
- 109
- No. of pages
- 4
- ISSN
- 0003-6951
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4964831
- Publication date
- 10-2016
- Peer reviewed
- Yes
- Austrian Fields of Science 2012
- 103025 Quantum mechanics, 103036 Theoretical physics, 103015 Condensed matter, 103009 Solid state physics
- Keywords
- ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Physics and Astronomy (miscellaneous)
- Portal url
- https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/e6a402ae-e481-46ee-aff9-96917a61df3b