Peculiarities of the photon-assisted field emissions from GaN nanorods Conference

Evtukh, A, Yilmazoglu, O, Litovchenko, V et al. (2010). Peculiarities of the photon-assisted field emissions from GaN nanorods . JOURNAL OF VACUUM SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY B, 28(2), 10.1116/1.3368463

cited authors

  • Evtukh, A; Yilmazoglu, O; Litovchenko, V; Semenenko, M; Kyriienko, O; Hartnagel, HL; Pavlidis, D

authors

abstract

  • The peculiarities of electron field and photon-assisted field emission from GaN nanorods are presented here. Well-aligned GaN field-emitter rods with nanometer-scale diameter were processed on a wafer with n+ -GaN top active layer on n+-Si substrate by plasma and photoelectrochemical etching. The current-voltage characteristics of emission current in Fowler-Nordheim (FN) plots show different slopes for the initial device and with different wavelengths illuminated devices. At electron-field emission from GaN, as a rule, the curves with two slopes (lower at a low voltage and higher at a high voltage) in Fowler-Nordheim coordinates were observed. The influence of light illumination on the field emission was discovered only on the low-voltage part of the curve. At higher voltages, the experimental curves without and with illumination practically coincided. The slope of the low-voltage part of FN plots decreased as a result of illumination. This fact points at the lowering of the energy barrier at field emission due to the electron excitation caused by light. The energy-barrier heights at field and photofield emission were estimated. For the explanation of experimental results, a model based on electron excitation by light, subbandgap and band-to-band transitions, and electron emission from different valleys with their specific electron affinities has been proposed. © 2010 American Vacuum Society.

publication date

  • January 1, 2010

published in

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

volume

  • 28

issue

  • 2