Investigations of optical and photoelectrical properties on GaN are reported. It is stated that already in undoped GaN a sufficiently high defect concentration of donor and acceptor types exists in the crystalline lattice. In this case fundamental absorption edge as well as GaN photoconductivity are well characterized by a heavily doped compensated semiconductor model. GaN:Zn luminescent and electrical properties are consistently analysed by using the same approach as for the description of GaN properties in the framework of a non‐homogeneous semiconductor model.
Investigations of photoelectromotive force and photoconductivity are made in order to find the mechanism of electroluminescence in the GaN: (Zn, O) light‐emitting structures. They enable to detect the existence of two channels of current flow in the structures investigated. One of them is a diode circuit with a potential barrier of ≈︁ 3 eV. This channel of conductivity is responsible for the unipolar electroluminescence with Emax ≈︁ 2.6 eV and with polarization degree up to ≈︁ 60%. The large value of the potential barrier height shows that gallium nitride may be of p‐type conductivity. The analysis of the peculiarities of the growth and doping of GaN does not contradict this supposition.
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