Non-linear macroscopic polarization in III-V nitride alloys

We study the dependence of macroscopic polarization on composition and strain in wurtzite III-V nitride ternary alloys using ab initio density-functional techniques. The spontaneous polarization is characterized by a large bowing, strongly dependent on the alloy microscopic structure. The bowing is due to the different response of the bulk binaries to hydrostatic pressure, and to internal strain effects (bond alternation). Disorder effects are instead minor. Deviations from parabolicity (simple bowing) are of order 10 % in the most extreme case of AlInN alloy, much less at all other compositions. Piezoelectric polarization is also strongly non-linear. At variance with the spontaneous component, this behavior is independent of microscopic alloy structure or disorder effects, and due entirely to the non-linear strain dependence of the bulk piezoelectric response. It is thus possible to predict the piezoelectric polarization for any alloy composition using the piezoelectricity of the parent binaries.Comment: RevTex 7 pages, 7 postscript figures embedde

Magnetotransport properties of a polarization-doped three-dimensional electron slab

We present evidence of strong Shubnikov-de-Haas magnetoresistance oscillations in a polarization-doped degenerate three-dimensional electron slab in an Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$N semiconductor system. The degenerate free carriers are generated by a novel technique by grading a polar alloy semiconductor with spatially changing polarization. Analysis of the magnetotransport data enables us to extract an effective mass of $m^{\star}=0.19 m_{0}$ and a quantum scattering time of $\tau_{q}= 0.3 ps$. Analysis of scattering processes helps us extract an alloy scattering parameter for the Al$_{x}$Ga$_{1-x}$N material system to be $V_{0}=1.8eV$

Accurate calculation of polarization-related quantities in semiconductors

We demonstrate that polarization-related quantities in semiconductors can be predicted accurately from first-principles calculations using the appropriate approach to the problem, the Berry-phase polarization theory. For III-V nitrides, our test case, we find polarizations, polarization differences between nitride pairs, and piezoelectric constants quite close to their previously established values. Refined data are nevertheless provided for all the relevant quantities.Comment: RevTeX 4 pages, no figure

First-principles prediction of structure, energetics, formation enthalpy, elastic constants, polarization, and piezoelectric constants of AlN, GaN, and InN: comparison of local and gradient-corrected density-functional theory

A number of diverse bulk properties of the zincblende and wurtzite III-V nitrides AlN, GaN, and InN, are predicted from first principles within density functional theory using the plane-wave ultrasoft pseudopotential method, within both the LDA (local density) and GGA (generalized gradient) approximations to the exchange-correlation functional. Besides structure and cohesion, we study formation enthalpies (a key ingredient in predicting defect solubilities and surface stability), spontaneous polarizations and piezoelectric constants (central parameters for nanostructure modeling), and elastic constants. Our study bears out the relative merits of the two density functional approaches in describing diverse properties of the III-V nitrides (and of the parent species N$_2$, Al, Ga, and In), and leads us to conclude that the GGA approximation, associated with high-accuracy techniques such as multiprojector ultrasoft pseudopotentials or modern all-electron methods, is to be preferred in the study of III-V nitrides.Comment: RevTeX 6 pages, 12 tables, 0 figure

Si doping effect on strain reduction in compressively strained Al0.49Ga0.51N thin films

Evaluation of the structural properties of 200-nm-thick Si-doped Al0.49Ga0.51N films, grown on nominally relaxed 1-mum-thick Al0.62Ga0.38N buffer layers on sapphire, revealed that increased Si doping promoted the relaxation of the compressively strained layers. The degree of strain relaxation R of the Al0.49Ga0.51N films, as determined by x-ray diffraction (XRD), increased from R=0.55 to R=0.94 with an increase in disilane injection from 1.25 nmol/min to 8.57 nmol/min. Transmission electron microscopy analysis showed that the edge threading dislocations (TDs) in the Al0.49Ga0.51N layers were inclined, such that the redirected TD lines had a misfit dislocation component. The calculated strain relaxation due to the inclined TDs was in close agreement with the values determined from XRD. We propose that the TD line redirection was promoted by the Si-induced surface roughness. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics

Reverse-bias leakage current reduction in GaN Schottky diodes by electrochemical surface treatment

An electrochemical surface treatment has been developed that decreases the reverse-bias leakage current in Schottky diodes fabricated on GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). This treatment suppresses current flow through localized leakage paths present in MBE-grown GaN, while leaving other diode characteristics, such as the Schottky barrier height, largely unaffected. A reduction in leakage current of three orders of magnitude was observed for Schottky diodes fabricated on the modified surface compared to diodes fabricated on the unmodified surface for reverse-bias voltages as large as -20 V. In addition to suppressing reverse-bias leakage, the surface treatment was found to improve substantially the ideality factor of the modified surface diodes compared to that of unmodified surface diodes, suggesting that such a surface modification process could be useful for a variety of GaN-based electronic devices. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics

Application and modeling of GaN FET in 1MHz large signal bandwidth power supply for radio frequency power amplifier

In this paper, implementation and testing of non- commercial GaN HEMT in a simple buck converter for envelope amplifier in ET and EER transmission techn iques has been done. Comparing to the prototypes with commercially available EPC1014 and 1015 GaN HEMTs, experimentally demonstrated power supply provided better thermal management and increased the switching frequency up to 25MHz. 64QAM signal with 1MHz of large signal bandw idth and 10.5dB of Peak to Average Power Ratio was gener ated, using the switching frequency of 20MHz. The obtaine defficiency was 38% including the driving circuit an d the total losses breakdown showed that switching power losses in the HEMT are the dominant ones. In addition to this, some basic physical modeling has been done, in order to provide an insight on the correlation between the electrical characteristics of the GaN HEMT and physical design parameters. This is the first step in the optimization of the HEMT design for this particular application

Assessment of orthologous splicing isoforms in human and mouse orthologous genes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Recent discoveries have highlighted the fact that alternative splicing and alternative transcripts are the rule, rather than the exception, in metazoan genes. Since multiple transcript and protein variants expressed by the same gene are, by definition, structurally distinct and need not to be functionally equivalent, the concept of gene orthology should be extended to the transcript level in order to describe evolutionary relationships between structurally similar transcript variants. In other words, the identification of true orthology relationships between gene products now should progress beyond primary sequence and "splicing orthology", consisting in ancestrally shared exon-intron structures, is required to define orthologous isoforms at transcript level.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>As a starting step in this direction, in this work we performed a large scale human- mouse gene comparison with a twofold goal: first, to assess if and to which extent traditional gene annotations such as RefSeq capture genuine splicing orthology; second, to provide a more detailed annotation and quantification of true human-mouse orthologous transcripts defined as transcripts of orthologous genes exhibiting the same splicing patterns.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>We observed an identical exon/intron structure for 32% of human and mouse orthologous genes. This figure increases to 87% using less stringent criteria for gene structure similarity, thus implying that for about 13% of the human RefSeq annotated genes (and about 25% of the corresponding transcripts) we could not identify any mouse transcript showing sufficient similarity to be confidently assigned as a splicing ortholog. Our data suggest that current gene and transcript data may still be rather incomplete - with several splicing variants still unknown. The observation that alternative splicing produces large numbers of alternative transcripts and proteins, some of them conserved across species and others truly species-specific, suggests that, still maintaining the conventional definition of gene orthology, a new concept of "splicing orthology" can be defined at transcript level.</p

Origin and microscopic mechanism for suppression of leakage currents in Schottky contacts to GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy

Dislocation-related conduction paths in n-type GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy and a mechanism for local suppression of current flow along these paths are analyzed using conductive atomic force microscopy, scanning Auger spectroscopy, and macroscopic current-voltage measurements. Application of an electric field at the GaN surface in an ambient atmospheric environment is shown to lead to local formation of gallium oxide in the immediate vicinity of the conduction paths, resulting in the strong suppression of subsequent current flow. Current-voltage measurements for Schottky diodes in which local conduction paths have been suppressed in this manner exhibit reverse-bias leakage currents reduced by two to four orders of magnitude compared to those in Schottky diodes not subjected to any surface modification process. These results demonstrate that the dislocation-related current leakage paths are the dominant source of leakage current in Schottky contacts to n-type GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy, and elucidate the nature of a microscopic process for their suppression. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics