Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport in gallium nitride

Abstract

The results of an ensemble Monte Carlo simulation of the electron transport in gallium nitride (GaN) are presented. The calculation shows that intervalley electron transfer plays a dominant role in GaN in high electric fields leading to a strongly inverted electron distribution and to a large negative differential conductance. An analytic expression for the polar optical momentum relaxation time for phonon energies larger than the thermal energy is also derived. This expression applies to many wide-gap semiconductors, such as GaN and SiC, at room temperature since these semiconductors have large polar optical-phonon energies (on the order of 100 meV). The calculated mobility agrees well with the results of the Monte Carlo calculation.