First‐principles electronic structure calculations on wurtzite AlN, GaN, and InN reveal crystal‐field splitting parameters ΔCF of −217, 42, and 41 meV, respectively, and spin–orbit splitting parameters Δ0 of 19, 13, and 1 meV, respectively. In the zinc blende structure ΔCF≡0 and Δ0 are 19, 15, and 6 meV, respectively. The unstrained AlN/GaN, GaN/InN, and AlN/InN valence band offsets for the wurtzite (zinc blende) materials are 0.81 (0.84), 0.48 (0.26), and 1.25 (1.04) eV, respectively. The trends in these spectroscopic quantities are discussed and recent experimental findings are analyzed in light of these predictions.

Valence band splittings and band offsets of AlN, GaN and InN.

GalliumNitridebasedhighelectronmobilitytransistors(HEMTs)areattractiveforuseinhighpowerandhighfrequencyapplications, with higher breakdown voltages and two dimensional electron gas (2DEG) density compared to their GaAs counterparts. Specific applications for nitride HEMTs include air, land and satellite based communications and phased array radar. Highly efficient GaNbased blue light emitting diodes (LEDs) employ AlGaN and InGaN alloys with different compositions integrated into heterojunctions and quantum wells. The realization of these blue LEDs has led to white light sources, in which a blue LED is used to excite a phosphor material; light is then emitted in the yellow spectral range, which, combined with the blue light, appears as white. Alternatively, multiple LEDs of red, green and blue can be used together. Both of these technologies are used in high-efficiency white electroluminescent light sources. These light sources are efficient and long-lived and are therefore replacing incandescent and fluorescent lamps for general lighting purposes. Since lighting represents 20‐30% of electrical energy consumption, and because GaN white light LEDs require ten times less energy than ordinary light bulbs, the use of efficient blue LEDs leads to significant energy savings. GaN-based devices are more radiation hard than their Si and GaAs counterparts due to the high bond strength in III-nitride materials. The response of GaN to radiation damage is a function of radiation type, dose and energy, as well as the carrier density, impurity content and dislocation density in the GaN. The latter can act as sinks for created defects and parameters such as the carrier removal rate due to trapping of carriers into radiation-induced defects depends on the crystal growth method used to grow the GaN layers. The growth method has a clear effect on radiation response beyond the carrier type and radiation source. We review data on the radiation resistance of AlGaN/GaN and InAlN/GaN HEMTs and GaN‐based LEDs to different types of ionizing radiation, and discuss ion stopping mechanisms. The primary energy levels introduced by different forms of radiation, carrier removal rates and role of existing defects in GaN are discussed. The carrier removal rates are a function of initial carrier concentration and dose but not of dose rate or hydrogen concentration in the nitride material grown by Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition. Proton and electron irradiation damage in HEMTs creates positive threshold voltage shifts due to a decrease in the two dimensional electron gas concentration resulting from electron trapping at defect sites, as well as a decrease in carrier mobility and degradation of drain current and transconductance. State-of-art simulators now provide accurate predictions for the observed changes in radiation-damaged HEMT performance. Neutron irradiation creates more extended damage regions and at high doses leads to Fermi level pinning while 60 Co γ-ray irradiation leads to much smaller changes in HEMT drain current relative to the other forms of radiation. In InGaN/GaN blue LEDs irradiated with protons at fluences near 10 14 cm −2 or electrons at fluences near 10 16 cm −2 , both current-voltage and light output-current characteristics are degraded with increasing proton dose. The optical performance of the LEDs is more sensitive to the proton or electron irradiation than that of the corresponding electrical performances. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by ECS. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (CC BY, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse of the work in any

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/2.0251602jss/pdf

Review—Ionizing Radiation Damage Effects on GaN Devices

In this paper, the transient analysis of an AlGaN/GaN high-electron mobility transistor (HEMT) device is presented. Drain-current dispersion effects are investigated when gate or drain voltages are pulsed. Gate-lag and drain-lag turn-on measurements are analyzed, revealing clear mechanisms of current collapse and related dispersion effects. Numerical 2-D transient simulations considering surface traps effects in a physical HEMT model have also been carried out. A comparison between experimental and theoretical results is shown. The presence of donor-type traps acting as hole traps, due to their low energy level of 0.25 eV relative to the valence band, with densities >1e20 cm-3 (>5e12 cm-2), uniformly distributed at the HEMT surface, and interacting with the free holes that accumulated at the top surface due to piezoelectric fields, accounts for the experimentally observed effects. Time constants next to 10 ms are deduced. Some additional features in the measured transient currents, with faster time constants, could not be associated with surface states

https://www.silvaco.com.cn/tech_lib_TCAD/publishedpapers/pdf/Trapping_Effects_InThe_Transient_Response.pdf

Trapping Effects in the Transient Response of AlGaN/GaN HEMT Devices

Current injection efficiency and its impact on efficiency-droop in InGaN single quantum well (QW) based light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are investigated. The analysis is based on current continuity relation for drift and diffusion carrier transport across the QW-barrier system. A self-consistent 6-band k  ·  p method is used to calculate the band structure for InGaN QW. The analysis indicates that the internal quantum efficiency in the conventional 24-A In 0.28 Ga 0.72 N–GaN QW structure reaches its peak at low injection current density and reduces gradually with further increase in current due to the large carrier thermionic emission. Structures combining 24-A In 0.28 Ga 0.72 N QW with 15-A Al 0.1 Ga 0.9 N barriers show slight reduction in quenching of the injection efficiency as current density increases. The use of 15-A Al 0.83 In 0.17 N barriers shows significant reduction in efficiency-droop (10% reduction of the internal quantum efficiency at current density of 620 A/cm 2 ). Thus, InGaN QWs employing thin layers of larger bandgap AlInN barriers suppress the efficiency-droop phenomenon significantly.

Current injection efficiency induced efficiency-droop in InGaN quantum well light-emitting diodes

One of the fundamental properties of semiconductors is their ability to support highly tunable electric currents in the presence of electric fields or carrier concentration gradients. These properties are described by transport coefficients such as electron and hole mobilities. Over the last decades, our understanding of carrier mobilities has largely been shaped by experimental investigations and empirical models. Recently, advances in electronic structure methods for real materials have made it possible to study these properties with predictive accuracy and without resorting to empirical parameters. These new developments are unlocking exciting new opportunities, from exploring carrier transport in quantum matter to in silico designing new semiconductors with tailored transport properties. In this article, we review the most recent developments in the area of ab initio calculations of carrier mobilities of semiconductors. Our aim is threefold: to make this rapidly-growing research area accessible to a broad community of condensed-matter theorists and materials scientists; to identify key challenges that need to be addressed in order to increase the predictive power of these methods; and to identify new opportunities for increasing the impact of these computational methods on the science and technology of advanced materials. The review is organized in three parts. In the first part, we offer a brief historical overview of approaches to the calculation of carrier mobilities, and we establish the conceptual framework underlying modern ab initio approaches. We summarize the Boltzmann theory of carrier transport and we discuss its scope of applicability, merits, and limitations in the broader context of many-body Green's function approaches. We discuss recent implementations of the Boltzmann formalism within the context of density functional theory and many-body perturbation theory calculations, placing an emphasis on the key computational challenges and suggested solutions. In the second part of the article, we review applications of these methods to materials of current interest, from three-dimensional semiconductors to layered and two-dimensional materials. In particular, we discuss in detail recent investigations of classic materials such as silicon, diamond, gallium arsenide, gallium nitride, gallium oxide, and lead halide perovskites as well as low-dimensional semiconductors such as graphene, silicene, phosphorene, molybdenum disulfide, and indium selenide. We also review recent efforts toward high-throughput calculations of carrier transport. In the last part, we identify important classes of materials for which an ab initio study of carrier mobilities is warranted. We discuss the extension of the methodology to study topological quantum matter and materials for spintronics and we comment on the possibility of incorporating Berry-phase effects and many-body correlations beyond the standard Boltzmann formalism.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6633/ab6a43/pdf

First-principles calculations of charge carrier mobility and conductivity in bulk semiconductors and two-dimensional materials

We present a comprehensive study of the transport dynamics of electrons in the ternary compounds, Al/sub x/Ga/sub 1-x/N and In/sub x/Ga/sub 1-x/N. Calculations are made using a nonparabolic effective mass energy band model. Monte Carlo simulation that includes all of the major scattering mechanisms. The band parameters used in the simulation are extracted from optimized pseudopotential band calculations to ensure excellent agreement with experimental information and ab initio band models. The effects of alloy scattering on the electron transport physics are examined. The steady state velocity field curves and low field mobilities are calculated for representative compositions of these alloys at different temperatures and ionized impurity concentrations. A field dependent mobility model is provided for both ternary compounds AlGaN and InGaN. The parameters for the low and high field mobility models for these ternary compounds are extracted and presented. The mobility models can be employed in simulations of devices that incorporate the ternary III-nitrides.

Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport in the III-nitride wurtzite phase materials system: binaries and ternaries

The emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) paradigm paves the way for flexible and automatized management at each layer. The SDN-enabled optical network requires each network element’s software abstraction to enable complete control by the centralized network controller. Nowadays, silicon photonics due to its low energy consumption, low latency, and small footprint is a promising technology for implementing photonic switching topologies, enabling transparent lightpath routing in re-configurable add-drop multiplexers. To this aim, a model for the complete management of photonic switching systems’ control states is fundamental for network control. Typically, photonics-based switches are structured by exploiting the modern technology of Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) that enables complex elementary cell structures to be driven individually. Thus PIC switches’ control states are combinations of a large set of elementary controls, and their definition is a challenging task. In this scenario, we propose the use of several data-driven techniques based on Machine Learning (ML) to model the control states of a PIC N × N photonic switch in a completely blind manner. The proposed ML-based techniques are trained and tested in a completely topological and technological agnostic way, and we envision their application in a real-time control plane. The proposed techniques’ scalability and accuracy are validated by considering three different switching topologies: the Honey-Comb Rearrangeable Optical Switch (HCROS), Spanke-Beneš, and the Beneš network. Excellent results in terms of predicting the control states are achieved for all of the considered topologies. 

Performance evaluation of data-driven techniques for the softwarized and agnostic management of an N×N photonic switch

Photonic integrated solutions for switching applications can yield large bandwidth and high reconfigurability while requiring low power and footprint. We propose a modular, scalable photonic integrated multi-band wavelength selective switch, able to independently route the input fiber channels to an arbitrary number of output ports.

Novel Design and Operation of Photonic- integrated WSS for Ultra-wideband Applications

Due to increasing traffic demand, the current optical transport infrastructure is experiencing capacity problems. Spa-tial Division Multiplexing (SDM) and Bandwidth Division Mul-tiplexing (BDM) have emerged as potential solutions to increase the capacity of the network infrastructure. In this paper, a novel modular photonic integrated multiband wavelength selective switch (WSS) in a reconfigurable optical add-drop multiplexer (ROADM) architecture is proposed. This proposed WSS can operate over a wide spectral range, including C+ L+S bands, and is potentially scalable to a large number of output fibers and routed channels while maintaining a small footprint. We investigated the network performance of the proposed multiband WSS switching structure in the Spain-E topology network and performed a detailed comparison for the SDM and BDM sce-narios. In comparison to the SDM approach, which requires the deployment of additional fibers, the results show that the cost-effective BDM scenario can utilize the capacity better without installing the new fiber infrastructure or using dark fibers.

Networking Analysis of Photonics Integrated Multiband WSS Based ROADM Architecture

We present a detailed performance analysis of a novel photonic integrated wide-band wavelength selective switch operating in S+c+L bands. The results demonstrate that the proposed device offers low loss and frequency flat behavior for the considered band in a single or cascade implementation.

E. Ghillino

Papers

Monte Carlo simulation of electron transport in the III-nitride wurtzite phase materials system: binaries and ternaries

Performance evaluation of data-driven techniques for the softwarized and agnostic management of an N×N photonic switch

Novel Design and Operation of Photonic- integrated WSS for Ultra-wideband Applications

Networking Analysis of Photonics Integrated Multiband WSS Based ROADM Architecture

Performance Analysis of Novel Multi-band Photonic-integrated WSS Operated on 400ZR