Analysis of Electrical Properties in Ni/GaN Schottky Contacts on nonpolar/semipolar GaN free-standing Substrates

Abstract This work focuses on the electrical properties of Ni/n-GaN Schottky barrier diodes (SBDs) fabricated on GaN bulk substrates with different crystal orientations. For the SBDs on a-plane, m-plane, and s5-plane GaN, the Schottky barrier heights (SBHs) exhibited magnitudes of 0.65 eV, 0.69 eV, and 0.75 eV, respectively. The relatively small SBH of a-plane devices results in a relatively larger reverse leakage current than that of m-plane and s5-plane. In addition, the carrier concentrations extracted by C–V characteristics are comparable for the GaN substrates with different crystal orientations. The temperature-dependent I–V characteristics indicate how the barrier inhomogeneity of the Ni/GaN Schottky contacts on the a-plane GaN is smaller than the others. Based on the XPS spectra results, the discrepancy in Schottky contact characteristics stems from the different polarization charges and/or surface oxides of the different crystal planes. The low GaOx density on a-plane GaN surface contributes to the minimum barrier inhomogeneity of the corresponding SBD devices.