Unusually High‐Density 2D Electron Gases in N‐Polar AlGaN/GaN Heterostructures with GaN/AlN Superlattice Back Barriers Grown on Sapphire Substrates

Herein, the observation of extremely high‐density (>10 14 cm −2 ) 2D electron gas (2DEG) in N‐polar AlGaN/GaN heterostructures grown on sapphire substrates is reported on. Due to introducing the GaN/AlN superlattice (SL) back barrier between the GaN buffer layer and AlGaN barrier layer, a giant enhancement of the 2DEG density is observed at the GaN/AlGaN interface from 3 × 10 13 cm −2 (without SL) to 1.4 × 10 14 cm −2 (with SL back barrier) that is only one order of magnitude below the intrinsic crystal limit of ≈10 15 cm −2 . Herein, it is found that the changes of 2DEG density with SL correlated well with the changes of the wafer warp parameter, which suggests that the strains are responsible for the 2DEG density enhancement (reduction of the piezoelectric polarization in the GaN channel). Nevertheless, this finding is probably insufficient to fully explain the observed high 2DEG density. Simultaneously, the room‐temperature electron mobility is 169 cm 2 V −1 s −1 , which with the electron density of 1.4 × 10 14 cm −2 gives a low sheet resistance of 264 Ω sq −1 (one of the lowest reported so far for the N‐polar 2DEG channel). Finally, the possibility of application of such high‐density 2DEG with low sheet resistance to transistors, emitters, and detectors is discussed.