We report the electrical characteristics of Schottky contacts with nine different metals (Ag, Ti, Cr, W, Mo, Au, Pd, Ni, and Pt) formed on clean m-plane surfaces by cleaving freestanding GaN substrates, compared with these of contacts on Ga-polar c-plane n-GaN surfaces grown on GaN substrates. The n-values from the forward current-voltage (I-V) characteristics are as good as 1.02-1.18 and 1.02-1.09 for the m-and c-plane samples, respectively. We found that the reverse I-V curves of both samples can be explained by the thermionic field emission theory, and that the Schottky barrier height of the cleaved m-plane contacts shows a metal work function dependence.
We have demonstrated the use of scanning internal photoemission microscopy (SIPM) to characterize crystal defects in an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure grown on Si substrates. SIPM enabled the visualization of unusually grown regions owing to cracking of the Si substrates. In these regions, photocurrent was large, which was consistent with leaky current–voltage characteristics. We also found smaller photoyield regions, which may originate from the Al-rich AlGaN regions on hillocks. We confirmed the usefulness of SIPM for investigating the inhomogeneity of crystal quality and electrical characteristics from macroscopic viewpoints.
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