Highly effective activation of Mg-implanted p-type GaN by ultra-high-pressure annealing

A high activation ratio of acceptors to Mg ions implanted into a homoepitaxial GaN layer was achieved through an ultra-high-pressure annealing (UHPA) process. Capless annealing under a nitrogen pressure of 1 GPa in a temperature range of 1573–1753 K activated acceptors without thermally decomposing the GaN layer. Conventional rapid thermal annealing leads to a serious decomposition at 1573 K, even with an AlN protective cap. The sample annealed at 1673 K under UHPA exhibited very intense cathodoluminescence in near-band edge and donor-acceptor-pair band emissions. The intensities were over one order of magnitude higher than those of the sample treated by conventional annealing. A Hall-effect measurement was obtained in the temperature range of 275–500 K for the UHPA sample. The obtained hole concentration and mobility at 300 K were 3.6 × 1016 cm−3 and 24.1 cm2 V−1 s−1, respectively. The mobility value was close to that of an epitaxial p-type GaN with the same doping concentration. An Arrhenius plot of hole concentrations showed that the acceptor concentration and ionization energy were separately estimated to be (2.6 ± 0.8) × 1018 cm−3 and 212 ± 5 meV, respectively. By comparing the Mg concentrations obtained from secondary ion mass spectrometry, the acceptor activation ratio (acceptor concentration/Mg concentration) of the UHPA samples exceeded 70%. These results suggest that the UHPA process as a postimplantation annealing technique is promising for the fabrication of GaN-based power devices with selective area doping.