Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier resonant tunneling diodes with bipolar

tunneling at room and cryogenic temperatures

Ye Shao, Santino D. Carnevale, A. T. M. G. Sarwar, Roberto C. Myers, and Wu Lu
Citation: Journal of Vacuum Science & Technology B 31, 06FA03 (2013); doi: 10.1116/1.4829432
View online: http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4829432
View Table of Contents: http://scitation.aip.org/content/avs/journal/jvstb/31/6?ver=pdfcov
Published by the AVS: Science & Technology of Materials, Interfaces, and Processing
Articles you may be interested in
Coaxial nanowire resonant tunneling diodes from non-polar AlN/GaN on silicon
Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 142115 (2012); 10.1063/1.3701586
Investigation of the negative differential resistance reproducibility in AlN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunnelling
diodes
Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 182109 (2011); 10.1063/1.3659468
Reliability in room-temperature negative differential resistance characteristics of low-aluminum content
AlGaN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes
Appl. Phys. Lett. 97, 181109 (2010); 10.1063/1.3515418
AlN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition
Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 042103 (2010); 10.1063/1.3294633
AlN/GaN double-barrier resonant tunneling diodes grown by rf-plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy
Appl. Phys. Lett. 81, 1729 (2002); 10.1063/1.1501157

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45

Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier resonant tunneling diodes

with bipolar tunneling at room and cryogenic temperatures
Ye Shao, Santino D. Carnevale, and A. T. M. G. Sarwar
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

Roberto C. Myersa)
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210
and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus,
Ohio 43210

Wu Lub)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210

(Received 22 June 2013; accepted 25 October 2013; published 12 November 2013)

III-N semiconductor resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) have attracted great research interest
because of their potential high speed performance. Thin film III-N RTDs are challenging due to
high dislocation densities resulted from large lattice and thermal expansion coefficient mismatches
to substrates. Here the authors present the growth and fabrication of AlN/GaN double barrier
nanowire RTDs. The AlN/GaN double barrier nanowire RTDs show clear negative differential
resistance with an onset voltage between 3.5 V and 4.5 V at both room and cryogenic temperatures.
The bipolar tunneling and temperature dependent device performance suggest that the electron
C 2013 American Vacuum Society.
transport of these devices is based on resonant tunneling. V
[http://dx.doi.org/10.1116/1.4829432]

I. INTRODUCTION
Because of the fast tunneling process or extremely high
switching speed (in terahertz range), resonant tunneling
devices have attracted considerable interest for a variety of
potential applications including high-resolution radar, imaging systems for low visibility environments, wide-band
secure communications systems, etc.14 III-nitride (III-N)
wide band gap semiconductors are promising materials for
resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) because of their unique
material properties such as large conduction band offset (i.e.,
2.1 eV between AlN and GaN), and excellent thermal stability. However, III-N thin films always suffer from a
large density of threading dislocations (typically
108109 cm2) since they are grown on non-native lattice-mismatched substrates such as sapphire, SiC, or Si.
As a result, previously reported planar tunneling devices
exhibited strong hysteresis and no negative differential
resistance (NDR) peak when scanning backwards (i.e.,
from positive voltage to 0 V) or at low temperatures.58
This has been attributed to trap-assisted tunneling rather
than resonance tunneling. The planar devices may also
suffer from interface roughness and island scattering,
which causes the degradation of peak to valley current
ratio (PVCR) after initial scans.9,10
Recently, III-nitride nanowires (NWs) have emerged
as an alternative choice for high performance RTDs. This
is because large surface-to-volume ratio and small cross
sections allow NWs to accommodate much higher lattice
mismatch with an efficient elastic strain relaxation, thereby
preventing the formation of dislocations during epitaxial
a)

Electronic mail: myers.1079@osu.edu

Electronic mail: lu.173@osu.edu

b)

06FA03-1 J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 31(6), Nov/Dec 2013

growth. Because of these advantages, III-N NWs have been

considered as a promising candidate of next generation
nanoscale electronic and optoelectronic devices. In general,
NDR features observed in III-N semiconductor NW devices
can be attributed to three different mechanisms:11 (a) trapassisted inelastic tunneling;12 (b) tunneling through potential
barriers between NWs in a network;13 (c) intervalley
scattering.1417 The trap-assisted inelastic tunneling related
NDR is commonly hysteretic, degrades after repeated scans,
and disappears at low temperatures.57,18 Thus, technically
robust RTDs require resonant tunneling through the barriers
ruling out any trap-assisted tunneling transport. So far, many
experimental studies have been focused on AlN/GaN double
barrier NW based RTDs to pursue reliable and reproducible
NDR with high PVCR and tunneling current density.1517
In this Letter, we report on axial catalyst free
AlN/GaN double barrier single NW RTDs grown by
plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE). The
high quality of AlN/GaN interfaces makes ideal resonant
tunneling possible.11 These NW RTDs show clear NDR
at both room and cryogenic temperatures and tunneling
under a bipolar bias.
II. EXPERIMENT
In our work, an axial GaN/AlN double barrier NW structure was grown using a Veeco 930 radio frequency PAMBE
on n-Si (111) substrates. The NWs have a symmetrical structure consisting of 500 nm n-GaN/1.5 nm i-AlN/2.5 nm
i-GaN/1.5 nm i-AlN/500 nm n-GaN along the axial c-axis
preferential growth direction with a majority of the wires
exhibiting N-polarity.18 As discussed below, a fraction of
each layer also deposits radially. The 500 nm n-GaN was
doped by Si at a doping level of 1  1019 cm3 for

2166-2746/2013/31(6)/06FA03/5/$30.00

C 2013 American Vacuum Society

V

06FA03-1

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45

06FA03-2 Shao et al.: Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs

electrical contacts. We have developed a two-step growth

method for catalyst free III-N NW growth.15 First, GaN
nanoislands were nucleated at a substrate temperature of
720  C until the desired areal density was achieved. Then
the substrate temperature was ramped up to 790  C to grow
the rest of the NW heterostructure. The elevated substrate
temperature inhibits nucleation of new islands, but already
nucleated nanoislands continue to grow as NWs, thus maintaining the same density achieved in the first growth step.
The Z-contrast atomic resolution scanning tunneling electron
microscope images of both as-grown vertical and coaxial
AlN/GaN heterostructures with the same two-step growth
method have been reported elsewhere.15,19 Thus, a clear abrupt AlN/GaN heterostructure interface without any thread
defects can be expected here.
For device fabrication, the as-grown GaN/AlN double
barrier NWs were removed from the original Si substrate by
sonication in ethanol, then spin-coated on a foreign silicon
substrate with a 100 nm thick, thermally grown SiO2 layer.
To make sure there is good chance to get working RTDs, a
500 nm electrodes gap as shown in Fig. 1(c) was designed
and defined by electron beam lithography using a Vistec
EBPG 5000 system at 50 keV and a beam current of 20 nA
with proximity correction implemented. A PMMA
(950 k)/PMMA-MAA bilayer resist scheme was used and
developed in methyl isobutyl ketone:isopropyl alcohol
(IPA) 1:2 for 30 s and rinsed in IPA to generate undercuts
for lift off. Ti/Al/Ti/Au metal contacts were deposited by
electron beam evaporation and lifted-off to form electrodes.
Room temperature measurements were performed on a
Karl Suss probe station using an Agilent 4156c semiconductor device parameter analyzer. The temperature dependent
IV measurements were performed on a cryogenic probe station (TTP4 Probe Station, Lake shore Cryotronics, Inc) from
77 to 256 K.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A cross section SEM image of as-grown NWs is shown
in Fig. 1(a). It shows most of the NWs are wedge-shaped
with a slim root and sturdy head, indicating that NW growth
takes place not only axially but also radially. All NWs have

06FA03-2

lengths around 1 lm and diameters between 150 and

200 nm.
The device structure sketch is shown in Fig. 1(b). As a
working device, a single NW needs to be in good contact
with two electrodes [shown in Fig. 1(c)]. So far, different
theoretical methods have been developed for quantum transport simulations in AlN/GaN double barrier heterostructure.20 To better understand the tunneling mechanism, a
one-dimensional self-consistent Schrodinger Poisson model,
coupled spontaneous and piezoelectric polarization effects,
was performed using software SILVACO ATLAS, to simulate the
band diagram of AlN/GaN double barrier heterostructure.
Figure 2 shows the conduction band edge (Ec), valence band
edge (Ev), and first two quasi-bound state energy levels with
their corresponding wave functions in the quantum well
along the c-axis growth direction. The simulated first two
quasi-bound state energy levels are 0.492 eV and 1.023 eV
above the Fermi level, respectively. At low biases or close to
equilibrium, both quasi-bound states are above the Fermi
level (Ef); thus, no tunneling is likely to happen. Most carriers are blocked by the AlN double barriers. At a certain
applied bias, the electron energy in the GaN region aligns
with the first bound state in the GaN well between the two
thin AlN barriers resulting tunneling resonance. Since the
NWs are made of polar crystalline materials (GaN and AlN),
the biasing conditions for tunneling at forward and reverse
are different due to the asymmetrical band structure caused
by the strong polarization effects.
The room temperature IV characteristics of RTDs are
shown in Fig. 3(a). These RTDs show clear NDR with an
onset voltage between 3.5 V and 4.5 V as shown in the
zoom-in views of insets in Fig. 3(a). It is important to note
that for most RTDs, the NDR feature appears during bipolar
voltage scan (i.e., scanning all the way from negative to positive voltage) with a similar absolute onset voltage. Usually,
in the case of trap-assisted inelastic tunneling based NDR,
the NDR feature itself is absent during bipolar voltage scan.
This is because the trapped electrons during negative voltage
scans take time to be detrapped again. Before detrapping is
completed, traps are occupied; thus, no more trap-assisted
inelastic tunneling can happen during the positive voltage
scan. Thus, the odd (bipolar) symmetry of the IVs is strong

FIG. 1. (Color online) (a) Cross-section scanning electron microscopy images of an as-grown NW sample. Most of NWs have lengths around 1 lm and diameters between 150 and 200 nm. (b) Schematic single NW RTD design. The NWs are transferred to a foreign Si substrate with a 100 nm thick SiO2. Ti/Al/Ti/Au
metal contacts with a 500 nm gap are defined by e-beam lithography and deposited by electron beam evaporation to form two electrodes. (c) The scanning
electron microscopy image of a working RTD device. It clearly shows a single NW cross the two electrodes as designed. The transferred NWs have lengths
around 1 lm and diameters between 150 and 200 nm.
J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, Vol. 31, No. 6, Nov/Dec 2013

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45

06FA03-3 Shao et al.: Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs

06FA03-3

FIG. 2. (Color online) Simulated band diagram of designed AlN/GaN double

barrier hereostructure. It also includes the first two quasi-bound states and
electron wavefuctions within the AlN/GaN quantum well in the conduction
band at equilibrium.

evidence of resonant tunneling rather than trap-assistant

inelastic tunneling. It is worth noting that most of the RTDs
show symmetrical nonlinear IV characteristics at room
temperature. We believe this is due to the existence of a
Schottky barrier between the metal contacts and NWs. The
exponentially increasing current before the NDR onset voltage is a result of thermionic emission.
In addition, cryogenic measurements were also performed. Our RTDs show clear NDR features down to 77 K
with onset voltage all around 4.5 V [Fig. 3(b)]. It is also
noted that the NDR onset voltage has a clear positive shift
when temperature is decreased. This is because the decrease
of carrier density at low temperature pushes the Fermi level
farther below the first quasi-bound state in the quantum well.
Therefore, a higher bias is needed to bend the conduction
band enough to achieve energy level resonance leading to
tunneling. In the case of trap-assisted inelastic tunneling,
electrons would not have enough activation energy to fill up
traps at low temperatures, and NDR could not occur. Thus,
the RTD operation at cryogenic temperatures also supports
resonant tunneling transport mechanism.
However, in a small number of cases, RTDs show multiple NDR features during a single voltage scan [Fig. 3(a)].
Besides the onset voltage between 3.5 V and 4.5 V as most
RTDs have, some RTDs also show other NDR features at
lower bias. We also have observed NDR features that appear
only during the first few scans in some devices. In these devices, the PVCR, though high at the beginning, becomes compressed until disappearing completely in subsequent scans.
Figure 4(a) shows the comparison of IV characteristics of a
fresh device and after it is aged. The current difference before
the onset of NDR between the two measurements is simply
the tunneling current. The exact mechanism of device

FIG. 3. (Color online) (a) Room temperature IV characteristics of NW

AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs. The NDR feature appears during bipolar
voltage scan. (b) Cryogenic IV characteristics of NW AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs. It shows a positive NDR onset voltage shift when temperature
goes down. Zoom-in views of NDR features are shown in the insets.

degradation after electrical stressing is unknown and under

investigation. This is also in debate for thin film GaN RTDs,
but it is widely accepted that the device degradation is a
result of high density threading dislocations in epitaxial thin
films due to the large lattice mismatch between GaN and substrates.9 For nanowire RTDs, we attribute the device degradation to the radial growth of long nanowires. Our hypothesis is
that such unexpected NDR features may be associated with
the three-dimensional heterostructure contained within the
NW. Though the preferential growth direction is in the caxis, in the case of AlN, however, growth occurs along both
the axial and radial direction due to the minimal adatom diffusion length of Al at the growth temperatures used.18,19 As
described above, the wedge shaped NW indicates that growth
occurs not only along the axial direction, but also radially.
Catalyst-free III-nitrides grown by PAMBE are well known
to exhibit radial growth. Previously, we found that GaN
radial growth is suppressed using the two-step growth method
described above. However, the original studies were confined
to shorter nanowires that were at most 200 nm in length. It is
likely that for the long growth times needed to form 1 lm

JVST B - Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45

06FA03-4 Shao et al.: Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs

06FA03-4

FIG. 4. (Color online) (a) Comparison of IV characteristics of a fresh device and after NDR feature disappears. The inset is an equivalent circuit for modeling
of thermionic emission current. The modeled thermionic emission current is a sum of reverse saturation current with the barrier lowering effect included and
the shunt path current. (b) Schematic NW growth process. NW growth is not only axially but also radially. During the two AlN barriers growth, two layers of
AlN side walls also formed. The overall grown NW is wedge shaped. (c) Two types of electron transport for: (1) transport along the center of NW and tunneling cross AlN/GaN double barrier. Thus, resonant tunneling is expected (left); (2) Thermionic emission current along the surface of NW and over the AlN barriers (right).

long wires, radial growth of GaN must be occurring, which

differs from recent observation of Fernandez-Garrido.21 The
resulting three-dimensional heterostructure is schematically
drawn in Fig. 4(b). The growth rate ratio between axial and
radial growth is over 10. In other words, 1.5 nm thick axial
AlN barrier growth results a core shell growth of AlN in a
range of few angstroms or less, especially at the foot of nanowires. We propose that the device degradation is due to the
alloy scattering or island scattering taking place at the bottom
surface of nanowires in the electron transport process due to
the small amount of Al deposition resulted from the Al adatom diffusion.
We modeled the leakage current [thermionic emission
current, blue circles in Fig. 4(a)] in an aged device after the
NDR feature disappears, as a pair of back to back Schottky
diodes with a shunt resistor in parallel. In the equivalent circuit shown in the inset of Fig. 4(a), once the lateral voltage
drop is established at either side, the current will flow as like
in a reversely biased metal-n-GaN Schottky diode dominated
by the energy barrier. As shown in Fig. 4(a), the fitted current is the sum of reverse saturation current, the barrier lowering effect under an electrical field, and the shunt current.
The fitted energy barrier is 0.25 eV and the shunt conductance Gp is 2.68  106 S. The modeled current has a very
good agreement with the experimental results. Since the
thermionic emission current is essentially the same after
NDR disappears as shown in Fig. 3(a), it is suggested that
the radial growth is likely the reason to cause device degradation, e.g., NDR disappears after electrical stressing, but
the shunt resistance is essentially the same. This is not unreasonable because the shunt path current should be going along
the path of Al poor regions or domains on the nanowire surface. To verify this hypothesis, current research efforts are
being directed to develop an etching process to etch the AlN
sidewalls before device processing.
IV. SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
In summary, we have demonstrated AlN/GaN double barrier single NW based RTDs. IV characteristics show clear

NDR at both room temperature and cryogenic temperatures

with an onset voltage between 3.5 V and 4.5 V. NDR features at bipolar voltage biases and at cryogenic temperatures
suggest that the electron transport in these devices is resonant tunneling rather than trap-assisted tunneling. The device
degradation observed in some devices is likely caused by the
radial growth of AlN during the long growth time of nanowires due to the minimal adatom diffusion length of Al at
the growth temperatures.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was partially supported by National Science
Foundation and Office of Naval Research.
1

K. B. Cooper, R. J. Dengler, N. Llombart, A. Talukder, A. V. Panangadan,

C. S. Peay, I. Mehdi, and P. H. Siegel, Proc. SPIE 7671, 76710 (2010).
2
N. Orihashi, S. Suzuki, and M. Asada, Appl. Phys. Lett. 87, 233501
(2005).
3
M. Feiginov, C. Sydlo, O. Cojocari, and P. Meissner, Appl. Phys. Lett. 99,
233506 (2011).
4
S. Suzuki, M. Asada, A. Teranishi, H. Sugiyama, and H. Yokoyama, Appl.
Phys. Lett. 97, 242102 (2010).
5
C. T. Foxon et al., Phys. Status Solidi C 0, 2389 (2003).
6
S. Golka, C. Pflugl, W. Schrenk, G. Strasser, C. Skierbiszewski, M.
Siekacz, I. Grzegory, and S. Porowski, Appl. Phys. Lett. 88, 172106
(2006).
7
K. Kishino and A. Kikuchi, Phys. Status Solidi 190, 23 (2002).
8
S. Sakr, E. Warde, M. Tchernycheva, L. Rigutti, N. Isac, and F. H. Julien,
Appl. Phys. Lett. 99, 142103 (2011).
9
C. Bayram, Z. Vashaei, and M. Razeghi, Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 042103
(2010).
10
A. E. Belyaev, C. T. Foxon, S. V. Novikov, O. Makarovsky, L. Eaves, M.
J. Kappers, and C. J. Humphreys, Appl. Phys. Lett. 83, 3626 (2003).
11
A. Dhabal, D. S. Chander, J. Ramkumar, and S. Dhamodaran, Micro Nano
Lett. 6, 280 (2011).
12
W. Chu, H. Chiang, C. Liu, Y. Lai, K. Hsu, and H. Chung, Appl. Phys.
Lett. 94, 182101 (2009).
13
B. Chitara, D. S. I. Jebakumar, C. N. R. Rao, and S. B. Krupanidhi,
Nanotechnology 20, 405205 (2009).
14
M. Dragoman et al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 053116 (2010).
15
S. D. Carnevale, C. Marginean, P. J. Phillips, T. F. Kent, A. T. M. G.
Sarwar, M. J. Mills, and R. C. Myers, Appl. Phys. Lett. 100, 142115
(2012).
16
R. Songmuang, G. Katsaros, E. Monroy, P. Spathis, C. Bougerol, M.
Mongillo, and S. De Franceschi, Nano Lett. 10, 3545 (2010).

J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B, Vol. 31, No. 6, Nov/Dec 2013

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45

06FA03-5 Shao et al.: Single nanowire AlN/GaN double barrier RTDs

17

L. Rigutti et al., Nanotechnology 21, 425206 (2010).

S. D. Carnevale, T. F. Kent, P. J. Phillips, A. T. M. G. Sarwar, C. Selcu,
R. F. Kile, and R. C. Myers, Nano Lett. 13, 3029 (2013).
19
S. D. Carnevale, J. Yang, P. J. Phillips, M. J. Mills, and R. C. Myers,
Nano Lett. 11, 866 (2011).

06FA03-5
20

18

21

E. Warde, S. Sakr, M. Tchernycheva, and F. Julien, J. Electron. Mater. 41,

965 (2012).
S. Fernandez-Garrido, V. M. Kaganer, K. K. Sabelfeld, T. Gotschke, J.
Grandal, E. Calleja, L. Geelhaar, and O. Brandt, Nano Lett. 13, 3274
(2013).

JVST B - Microelectronics and Nanometer Structures

Redistribution subject to AVS license or copyright; see http://scitation.aip.org/termsconditions. Download to IP: 200.129.163.72 On: Mon, 10 Nov 2014 20:05:45