Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2011
Photocurrent transients due to illumination by above-bandgap and subbandgap light were studied for Si doped and undoped films of AlGaN grown by MOCVD on sapphire and having compositions ranging from 0% to 60% of Al. It is shown that in Si doped layers the decay of photoconductivity takes extremely long time (hundreds and thousands seconds, depending on temperature, composition and illumination conditions). Both the kinetics of rise and fall of photoconductivity are best described by stretched exponents. The characteristic decay times are virtually temperature independent for temperatures below 270–290K and have activation energy of 0.14–0.26 eV (depending on composition) for higher temperatures. The decay times become longer with decreased light intensity and increase when above-bandgap light excitation is replaced by subbandgap light excitation (the photocurrent values from which the decay starts being equivalent). The results cannot be quantitatively explained by the effects of changing of the quasi-Fermi level position well known for DX-centers in AlGaAs. No persistent photoconductivity could be observed in high resistivity undoped AlGaN films with 5%, 15% and 25% of Al.
To send this article to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Dropbox account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you used this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your Google Drive account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.