Carrier scattering and temperature characteristics of mobility and resistivity of Fe-doped GaN

Abstract The electron mobility and dark resistivity of Fe-doped semi-insulating GaN (GaN:Fe) are calculated over the temperature range from 10 K to 500 K by considering the impurities compensation mechanism and majority carrier scattering. The temperature characteristic curve of the mobility exhibits unimodality and the curve of resistivity decreases monotonically with rising temperature. The carrier scatterings induced by ionized impurities, acoustic deformation potential, piezoelectric, and polar optical phonons are analysed. It is found that the mobility is determined by ionized impurity scattering, piezoelectric scattering, and polar optical phonon scattering in different temperature ranges, and the contribution of acoustic deformation potential scattering is negligible over the entire temperature range. Furthermore, the effects of concentrations of shallow donors and deep acceptors on the temperature characteristic curves of mobility and resistivity, the peak mobility and its corresponding temperature (peak temperature), and the mobility and resistivity at room temperature are discussed. Our simulation shows the calculation results agree very well with the reported experimental and theoretical results when the Fe-related level is selected as 0.58 eV below the conduction band edge. Understanding of thermal properties of dark resistivity and mobility can be useful for optimizing GaN:Fe-based electronic and photonic devices performance in different temperature regimes.