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Impact of Substrate Morphology and Structural Defects in Freestanding Gallium Nitride on the Breakdown Characteristics of GaN-on-GaN Vertical Diodes

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Abstract

The morphology of GaN substrates grown by hydride vapor-phase epitaxy (HVPE) and by ammonothermal methods has been correlated with reverse-bias stress testing applied to GaN-on-GaN p-i-n diodes. GaN substrates grown by HVPE showed ordered, well-separated arrays of surface features when observed using x-ray topography (XRT). All fabricated diodes that overlapped with these features had reverse-bias voltages typically of less than 100 V before reaching a critical leakage current limit that was set at 10–6 A. In contrast, diodes not overlapping with such features reached reverse-bias voltages exceeding 300 V for the same leakage current limit. After surface etching, the HVPE substrate showed evidence for defect clusters and macro-pits. XRT images of the ammonothermal GaN substrate revealed no visible features. However, some diodes fabricated on the ammonothermal substrate still failed to reach reverse-bias voltages comparable to those of the HVPE-grown samples. Diodes on HVPE and ammonothermal substrates with low breakdown voltage showed crater-like surface damage. Progressive ion milling across such failed devices revealed the presence of voids and threading dislocations that penetrated deep into the substrate (~ 25 µm); these features were not observed in diodes with high reverse-bias voltages and low leakage current. This work emphasizes the potential unsuspected impact of substrate morphology in limiting the performance of vertical GaN devices.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by ARPA-E Award DE-AR0000868. The authors acknowledge the use of facilities within the John M. Cowley Center for High Resolution Electron Microscopy and the Eyring Materials Center at Arizona State University.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School for Engineering of Matter, Transport and Energy, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Prudhvi Peri

  2. School of Electrical, Energy and Computer Engineering, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    Kai Fu, Houqiang Fu & Yuji Zhao

  3. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, USA

    Kai Fu

  4. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Rice University, Houston, TX, 77005, USA

    Jingan Zhou & Yuji Zhao

  5. Department of Physics, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287, USA

    David J. Smith

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Peri, P., Fu, K., Fu, H. et al. Impact of Substrate Morphology and Structural Defects in Freestanding Gallium Nitride on the Breakdown Characteristics of GaN-on-GaN Vertical Diodes. J. Electron. Mater. 52, 3343–3351 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11664-023-10303-2

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