Solid-State Electronics, Vol.45, No.5, 717-720, 2001
Low-resistance Ni/Au ohmic contact to Mg-doped of Al0.15Ga0.85N/GaN superlattices
Electrical properties of Ni (6 nm)/Au (14 nm) contacts to Mg-doped strained layer Al0.15Ga0.85N/GaN supel lattices have been analyzed. The hole concentration and mobility are around 1 x 10(18) cm(3) and 10 cm(2)/V s, respectively. Hall effect measurements for this structure show a high conductivity that the high activation efficiency of Mg is due to the strain-induced piezoelectric field. The temperature-dependence resistivity result suggested that high-hole concentration can enhance tunneling transport for field emission and thereby reducing the contact resistance of metal-semiconductor interface. Before thermal alloying, the current-voltage (I-V characteristic of Ni/Au contact on p-type Al0.15Ga0.85N/GaN SLs shows non-ohmic behavior. As the alloying temperature increases to 600 degreesC, the I-V curve shows a characteristic of ohmic contact. A specific contact resistance as low as 4.0 x 10(-6) Omega cm(2) was obtained at alloying temperature of 650 degreesC for 5 min in N-2 ambient.