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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Hatanpää, Benjamin, Minnich, Austin J.
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08458
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author Hatanpää, Benjamin
Minnich, Austin J.
author_facet Hatanpää, Benjamin
Minnich, Austin J.
contents Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) is an ultrawide-bandgap semiconductor of significant interest for high-frequency and high-power electronics applications owing to its high saturation drift velocity and high electric breakdown field. Beyond transistors, devices exploiting the valley degree of freedom or negative differential resistance are of keen interest. While diamond has been found to have potential for these applications, c-BN has not been considered owing to a lack of knowledge of the relevant charge transport properties. Here, we report a study of the high-field transport and noise properties of c-BN using first-principles calculations. We find that c-BN exhibits an abrupt region of negative differential resistance (NDR) below 140 K, despite the lack of multi-valley band structure typically associated with NDR. This feature is found to arise from a strong energy dependence of the scattering rates associated with optical phonon emission. The high optical phonon energy also leads to an intervalley scattering time rivaling that of diamond. The negative differential resistance and long intervalley scattering time indicate the potential of c-BN for transferred-electron and valleytronic devices, respectively.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2408_08458
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Valleytronics and negative differential resistance in cubic boron nitride: a first-principles study
Hatanpää, Benjamin
Minnich, Austin J.
Materials Science
Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) is an ultrawide-bandgap semiconductor of significant interest for high-frequency and high-power electronics applications owing to its high saturation drift velocity and high electric breakdown field. Beyond transistors, devices exploiting the valley degree of freedom or negative differential resistance are of keen interest. While diamond has been found to have potential for these applications, c-BN has not been considered owing to a lack of knowledge of the relevant charge transport properties. Here, we report a study of the high-field transport and noise properties of c-BN using first-principles calculations. We find that c-BN exhibits an abrupt region of negative differential resistance (NDR) below 140 K, despite the lack of multi-valley band structure typically associated with NDR. This feature is found to arise from a strong energy dependence of the scattering rates associated with optical phonon emission. The high optical phonon energy also leads to an intervalley scattering time rivaling that of diamond. The negative differential resistance and long intervalley scattering time indicate the potential of c-BN for transferred-electron and valleytronic devices, respectively.
title Valleytronics and negative differential resistance in cubic boron nitride: a first-principles study
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.08458