Germanium – the superior dopant in n‐type GaN

We present an experimental study about the influence of Si and Ge doping in GaN with focus on the occurring strain levels and overall crystalline quality. Extremely high quality samples were examined by means of Raman spectroscopy, demonstrating effective, n-type doping concentrations up to the 5 × 1019 cm–3 regime. By studying the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the E2(high) Raman mode with rising doping concentration, Ge is approved as the by far superior dopant if compared to Si. Even elevated nominal Ge concentrations yield corresponding FWHM values of just 3 cm–1, a most competitive value even for bare bulk GaN samples. At the same time, the biaxial, compressive stress that is introduced by such high Ge doping amounts to just 0.2 GPa, in clear contrast to the particular case of silicon. Here, even moderate doping levels lead to tensile stress up to 1 GPa and consequently to a serious degeneration of the overall crystal quality as approved by our Raman analysis. Additionally, the examined high doping concentrations enable the observation of longitudinal optical phonon plasmon (LPP) modes in the Raman spectra, which serve as a direct tool for the determination of the effective doping concentration. A careful analysis of the LPP coupling at cryogenic and room temperature yields within the error interval identical free carrier concentrations in all germanium doped samples, pointing towards an energetically shallow nature of the dopant. (© 2015 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH &Co. KGaA, Weinheim)