Effect of light Si doping on the properties of GaN

An obvious increase in electron mobility and yellow luminescence (YL) band intensity was found in light Si doping GaN. For a series of GaN samples with different doping concentration, the dislocation density is almost the same. It is inferred that the abrupt increase in mobility and YL intensity does not originate from the change of dislocation density. The mobility behavior is attributed to the screening of scattering by dislocation and increase of ionized impurity scattering with the increase of Si doping concentration. At lower doping level, the screening of dislocation scattering is dominant, which results in the increase in carrier mobility. At higher doping level, the increase in ionized impurity scattering leads to the decrease in carrier mobility. Higher mobility causes longer diffusion length of nonequilibrium carrier. More dislocations will participate in the recombination process which induces stronger YL intensity in light Si doping GaN.