Hole mobility limiting factors in dopant-free p-type distributed polarization-doped AlGaN

Abstract

We investigated the hole mobility limiting factors in dopant-free p-type distributed polarization-doped (DPD) AlGaN layers by an experimental method. p-DPD AlGaN exhibited a higher hole mobility than GaN:Mg with a similar room temperature hole concentration across all temperature ranges owing to the absence of ionized impurity scattering. In addition, unlike in n-DPD AlGaN, alloy scattering was not always critical in p-DPD AlGaN. The extracted alloy scattering potential was only 0.3 eV, which resulted in a reduced effect of alloy scattering and originated from a small valence band offset in the GaN/AlN heterojunction system. The results suggest that DPD principally enables the fabrication of low-resistance p-type nitride semiconductor thin films as a result of the high hole concentration and high hole mobility.