Band offsets of non-polar A-plane GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterostructures measured by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy

Ling Sang; Qin Sheng Zhu; Shao Yan Yang; Gui Peng Liu; Hui Jie Li; Hong Yuan Wei; Chun Mei Jiao; Shu Man Liu; Zhan Guo Wang; Xiao Wei Zhou; Wei Mao; Yue Hao; Bo Shen

doi:10.1186/1556-276X-9-470

Band offsets of non-polar A-plane GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterostructures measured by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy

Nanoscale Res Lett. 2014 Sep 4;9(1):470. doi: 10.1186/1556-276X-9-470. eCollection 2014.

Authors

Affiliations

¹ State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
² Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Material Science, Beijing Key Laboratory of Low Dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
³ State Key Discipline Laboratory of Wide Band Gap Semiconductor Technology, Xidian University, Xi'an 710071, China.

Abstract

The band offsets of non-polar A-plane GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterojunctions are measured by X-ray photoemission spectroscopy. A large forward-backward asymmetry is observed in the non-polar GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterojunctions. The valence-band offsets in the non-polar A-plane GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterojunctions are determined to be 1.33 ± 0.16 and 0.73 ± 0.16 eV, respectively. The large valence-band offset difference of 0.6 eV between the non-polar GaN/AlN and AlN/GaN heterojunctions is considered to be due to piezoelectric strain effect in the non-polar heterojunction overlayers.

Keywords: GaN/AlN; Heterostructure; Non-polar; X-ray photoemission spectroscopy.