A deep acceptor defect responsible for the yellow luminescence in GaN and AlGaN

Abstract

In the present study, the electrical and optical properties of deep defects in p-i-n GaN junction and AlGaN/GaN heterojunction are investigated by means of the deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS), Laplace DLTS, and electroluminescence (EL) techniques. We demonstrate that in both structures the yellow luminescence (YL) is a dominant band in the EL spectra recorded at room temperature. We correlate the YL band with the minority DLTS peaks observed at about 370 K. A gallium vacancy-related defect seems to be a probable candidate as to the origin of the defect. Another dominant majority peak observed in the DLTS studies was concluded to be linked with a donor-like defect in the upper half of the bandgap. The origin of the defect is discussed.