Polarization-induced Zener tunnel junctions in wide-band-gap heterostructures.
The large electronic polarization in III-V nitrides allows for novel physics not possible in other semiconductor families. In this work, interband Zener tunneling in wide-band-gap GaN heterojunctions is demonstrated by using polarization-induced electric fields. The resulting tunnel diodes are more conductive under reverse bias, which has applications for zero-bias rectification and mm-wave imaging. Since interband tunneling is traditionally prohibitive in wide-band-gap semiconductors, these polarization-induced structures and their variants can enable a number of devices such as multijunction solar cells that can operate under elevated temperatures and high fields.
Simon
John
J
Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA. jsimon@nd.edu
Zhang
Ze
Z
Goodman
Kevin
K
Xing
Huili
H
Kosel
Thomas
T
Fay
Patrick
P
Jena
Debdeep
D