High-performance negative differential resistance characteristics in homoepitaxial AlN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes

Abstract

Abstract In this work, high-performance negative differential resistance (NDR) characteristics are demonstrated in homoepitaxial AlN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs). The devices are grown by plasma-assisted MBE on bulk GaN substrates and exhibit robust and repeatable NDR at RT. A high peak current density of 183 kA cm−2 is simultaneously demonstrated with a large peak-to-valley current ratio of 2.07, mainly benefiting from the significantly reduced dislocation density and improved hyper-abrupt heterointerfaces in the active region, which boosts the electron quantum transport in the resonant tunneling cavity. The achievement shows the promising potential to enhance the oscillation frequency and output power of GaN-based RTD oscillators, imperative for next-generation high-power solid-state compact terahertz oscillators application.