Mechanism of Photocurrent Degradation and Contactless Healing in p-Type Mg-Doped Gallium Nitride Thin Films

Nanomaterials (Basel). 2022 Mar 9;12(6):899. doi: 10.3390/nano12060899.

Abstract

Light-induced degradation (LID) phenomenon is commonly found in optoelectronics devices. Self-healing effect in halide lead perovskite solar cells was investigated since the electrons and holes in the shallow traps could escape easily at room temperature. However, the degradation in the semiconductors could not easily recover at room temperature, and many of them needed annealing at temperatures in the several hundreds, which was not friendly to the integrated optoelectronic semiconductor devices. To solve this problem, in this work, LID effect of photocurrent in p-type Mg-doped gallium nitride thin films was investigated, and deep defect and vacancy traps played a vital role in the LID and healing process. This work provides a contactless way to heal the photocurrent behavior to its initial level, which is desirable in integrated devices.

Keywords: Mg-doped gallium nitride; contactless healing; light-induced degradation; photocurrent device.