Electron mobility in AlN from first principles

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Wang, Amanda, Pant, Nick, Lee, Woncheol, Chen, Jie-Cheng, Giustino, Feliciano, Kioupakis, Emmanouil
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Wang, Amanda
Pant, Nick
Lee, Woncheol
Chen, Jie-Cheng
Giustino, Feliciano
Kioupakis, Emmanouil
author_facet Wang, Amanda
Pant, Nick
Lee, Woncheol
Chen, Jie-Cheng
Giustino, Feliciano
Kioupakis, Emmanouil
contents Aluminum nitride is a promising ultra-wide band gap semiconductor for optoelectronics and power electronics. However, its practical applications have been limited by challenges with doping and achieving high electrical conductivity. Recent advances in crystal quality and defect control have led to improvements in experimentally measured mobilities. In this work, we apply first-principles calculations to determine the upper limits of the electron mobility in AlN as a function of temperature, doping, and crystallographic orientation. We account for the combined effects of electron scattering by phonons and ionized impurity to model doped systems, and examine both full and partial ionization conditions. Our results show that the piezoelectric interaction from the long-range component of the acoustic modes is the dominant source of electron-phonon scattering at room temperature. Ionized-impurity scattering starts to dominate scattering at dopant concentrations above $10^{16}$ cm$^{-3}$, reducing the mobility by more than an order of magnitude in the high doping regime. Our calculated Hall mobility values are in good agreement with experimental data for samples with comparable dopant concentrations. We also find that electron mobilities as high as $956$ cm$^2$/V$\cdot$s could be achievable at lower dopant concentrations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2506_09240
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Electron mobility in AlN from first principles
Wang, Amanda
Pant, Nick
Lee, Woncheol
Chen, Jie-Cheng
Giustino, Feliciano
Kioupakis, Emmanouil
Materials Science
Aluminum nitride is a promising ultra-wide band gap semiconductor for optoelectronics and power electronics. However, its practical applications have been limited by challenges with doping and achieving high electrical conductivity. Recent advances in crystal quality and defect control have led to improvements in experimentally measured mobilities. In this work, we apply first-principles calculations to determine the upper limits of the electron mobility in AlN as a function of temperature, doping, and crystallographic orientation. We account for the combined effects of electron scattering by phonons and ionized impurity to model doped systems, and examine both full and partial ionization conditions. Our results show that the piezoelectric interaction from the long-range component of the acoustic modes is the dominant source of electron-phonon scattering at room temperature. Ionized-impurity scattering starts to dominate scattering at dopant concentrations above $10^{16}$ cm$^{-3}$, reducing the mobility by more than an order of magnitude in the high doping regime. Our calculated Hall mobility values are in good agreement with experimental data for samples with comparable dopant concentrations. We also find that electron mobilities as high as $956$ cm$^2$/V$\cdot$s could be achievable at lower dopant concentrations.
title Electron mobility in AlN from first principles
topic Materials Science
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.09240