An electrochemical surface treatment has been developed that decreases the reverse-bias leakage current in Schottky diodes fabricated on GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE). This treatment suppresses current flow through localized leakage paths present in MBE-grown GaN, while leaving other diode characteristics, such as the Schottky barrier height, largely unaffected. A reduction in leakage current of three orders of magnitude was observed for Schottky diodes fabricated on the modified surface compared to diodes fabricated on the unmodified surface for reverse-bias voltages as large as -20 V. In addition to suppressing reverse-bias leakage, the surface treatment was found to improve substantially the ideality factor of the modified surface diodes compared to that of unmodified surface diodes, suggesting that such a surface modification process could be useful for a variety of GaN-based electronic devices. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.

Dislocation-related conduction paths in n-type GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy and a mechanism for local suppression of current flow along these paths are analyzed using conductive atomic force microscopy, scanning Auger spectroscopy, and macroscopic current-voltage measurements. Application of an electric field at the GaN surface in an ambient atmospheric environment is shown to lead to local formation of gallium oxide in the immediate vicinity of the conduction paths, resulting in the strong suppression of subsequent current flow. Current-voltage measurements for Schottky diodes in which local conduction paths have been suppressed in this manner exhibit reverse-bias leakage currents reduced by two to four orders of magnitude compared to those in Schottky diodes not subjected to any surface modification process. These results demonstrate that the dislocation-related current leakage paths are the dominant source of leakage current in Schottky contacts to n-type GaN grown by molecular-beam epitaxy, and elucidate the nature of a microscopic process for their suppression. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.