This work is part of a retrospective collection of 179 electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) from the VCU Libraries pilot ETD system that were designated as available only to VCU users. Please contact us at if you have questions or if you are the author of one of these and would like to release it for online public access.
Non-VCU users: Please talk to your librarian about requesting this thesis through interlibrary loan.
Defense Date
2007
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy
Department
Electrical Engineering
First Advisor
Dr. Hadis Morkoç
Abstract
This work examines extended, point, and surface defects in GaN by means of electric force microscopy, photoluminescence and deep-level transient spectroscopy. Modeling of the surface band bending, its origin, and the effects of fabrication processing steps are discussed in the first part of the dissertation. Experimental results indicate that spontaneous polarization does not play a predominant role in GaN band bending. An increase of surface band bending due to annealing and etching was observed, while passivation did not produce changes. However, passivation did reduce reverse-bias leakage current by one to two orders of magnitude in GaN Schottky diodes. The optical properties of GaN were found to be sensitive to fabrication processing steps, most likely due to changes in the total density of surface states.The second part of this dissertation concerns the reduction of extended defects and associated deep levels in layers of GaN grown on different templates. Templates employing a low temperature GaN nucleation layer, epitaxial lateral overgrowth, and SiNx nanonetwork are compared in terms of deep level concentrations in the resulting GaN films. The concentrations of two types of traps, A (Ec-ET ~ 0.54-0.58 eV) and B (Ec-ET ~ 0.20-0.24 eV), were the highest for the sample with a low temperature nucleation layer and lowest for a sample with a 6 min SiNx deposition time. We surmise that the defects responsible for the dominant trap A are located along dislocation lines and form clusters.In the last part we investigate the piezoelectric and ferroelectric properties of PZT in Pb(Zr, Ti)O3(PZT)/GaN structures, and the effects of interface states. Sol-gel derived thin PZT films on GaN and Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si surfaces were studied by piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM), where quantitative characterization of piezoelectric properties of PZT films was performed. Superior piezoelectric properties of PZT/GaN/sapphire structures as compared to PZT/ Pt/Ti/SiO2/Si structures were observed and explained by a different preferred orientation of PZT. Despite the possible existence of a strong depolarization field at the PZT/GaN interface, we confirm with PFM the presence of a remanent polarization in PZT/GaN/sapphire structures.
Rights
© The Author
Is Part Of
VCU University Archives
Is Part Of
VCU Theses and Dissertations
Date of Submission
June 2008
VCU Only:
Off Campus Download
Comments
Part of Retrospective ETD Collection, restricted to VCU only.