Effect of Si doping on the thermal conductivity of bulk GaN at elevated temperatures – theory and experiment

The effect of Si doping on the thermal conductivity of bulk GaN was studied both theoretically and experimentally. The thermal conductivity of samples grown by Hydride Phase Vapor Epitaxy (HVPE) with Si concentration ranging from 1.6×1016 to 7×1018 cm-3 was measured at room temperature and above using the 3ω method. The room temperature thermal conductivity was found to decrease with increasing Si concentration. The highest value of 245±5 W/m.K measured for the undoped sample was consistent with the previously reported data for free-standing HVPE grown GaN. In all samples, the thermal conductivity decreased with increasing temperature. In our previous study, we found that the slope of the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity gradually decreased with increasing Si doping. Additionally, at temperatures above 350 K the thermal conductivity in the highest doped sample (7×1018 cm-3) was higher than that of lower doped samples. In this work, a modified Callaway model adopted for n-type GaN at high...