title: Evidence of type-II band alignment in III-nitride semiconductors: experimental and theoretical investigation for In 0.17 Al 0.83 N/GaN heterostructures.
abstract: Type-II band alignment structure is coveted in the design of photovoltaic devices and detectors, since it is beneficial for the transport of photogenerated carriers. Regrettably, for group-III-nitride wide bandgap semiconductors, all existing devices are limited to type-I heterostructures, owing to the unavailable of type-II ones. This seriously restricts the designing flexibility for optoelectronic devices and consequently the relevant performance of this material system. Here we show a brandnew type-II band alignment of the lattice-matched In 0.17 Al 0.83 N/GaN heterostructure from the perspective of both experimental observations and first-principle theoretical calculations. The band discontinuity is dominated by the conduction band offset ΔEC, with a small contribution from the valence band offset ΔEV which equals 0.1 eV (with E(AlInN(VBM) being above E(GaN)(VBM)). Our work may open up new prospects to realize high-performance III-Nitrides optoelectronic devices based on type-II energy band engineering.
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Jiaming
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Fujun
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Xu
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Xia
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: An
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Collaboration Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xin-Zheng
authors.initials: XZ
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Song
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Department of Physics, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Weikun
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Ge
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Guangshan
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Tian
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Jing
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Collaboration Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Xinqiang
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Tang
authors.affiliation: State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China.
authors.forename: Zhijian
authors.initials: Z
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science and Beijing Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Wei
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science and Beijing Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Weiying
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science and Beijing Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Peng
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Jin
authors.affiliation: Key Laboratory of Semiconductor Materials Science and Beijing Key Laboratory of Low-dimensional Semiconductor Materials and Devices, Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China.
authors.forename: Yonghai
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.affiliation: 1] State Key Laboratory of Artificial Microstructure and Mesoscopic Physics, School of Physics, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China [2] Collaboration Innovation Center of Quantum Matter, Beijing 100084, China.
authors.forename: Bo
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Shen