The study of carrier dynamics in wide band gap semiconductors is of great importance for UV detectors and emitters which are expected to be the building blocks for optoelectronic applications and high voltage electronics. On the experimental side, the progress made in the past two decades in generating subpicosecond laser pulses, resulted in numerous experiments that gave insight into the carrier dynamics in semiconductors. From the theoretical standpoint, the study of carrier interactions together with robust simulation methods, such as Monte-Carlo, provided great progress toward explaining the experimental results. These studies immensely improve our understanding of time scales of carrier recombination, relaxation and transport in semiconductor materials and devices which lead to optimizing the operation of optoelectronic devices, more specifically, emitters and detectors.
Wide band gap materials having high breakdown field, wide band gap energy and high saturation velocity are among the most important semiconductors employed in the active layer of LEDs and lasers. GaN , its alloys, and ZnO are among the most important materials in semiconductor devices. Moreover, the use of lattice matched layers based on InAlN or InAlGaN is an alternative design approach which could mitigate the effect of polarization and enable growing thicker layers due to the higher structural quality.
We first perform the study of carrier dynamics generated by ultrafast laser pulses in bulk GaN and ZnO materials to investigate the temperature dependent luminescence rise time. The obtained results are compared to the experimental results which show an excellent agreement. In this work, we use Monte Carlo method to evaluate the distribution of carriers considering the interaction of carriers with other carriers and also with polar optical phonons in the system. Considering the ongoing research about the advantages of lattice matched nitride based material systems, we also studied the properties of GaN layers lattice matched to InAlN and InAlGaN. As an application, we utilized the GaN/InAlGaN material system to study the carrier dynamics in Quantum Cascade Lasers. Furthermore, due to the superior properties of GaN which makes it an excellent candidate in power electronic applications, we also design and simulate an advanced vertical trench power MOSFET using drift diffusion and Monte Carlo models and characterize the performance of the device.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bu.edu/oai:open.bu.edu:2144/17069 |
| Date | 21 June 2016 |
| Creators | Shishehchi, Sara |
| Source Sets | Boston University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis/Dissertation |
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