Electronic and structural properties of Al1-xInxN with application to an electronic device.

Abstract

The ternary AlInN is a material used in optical components such as light emitting diodes, laser diodes, fiber Bragg grating as well as in electronic components such as HEMTs. It comes in two phases, wurtzite and zinc blende, it is proposed then, in this work, first to compare the structural and electronic properties of the two phases. This comparison would be beneficial to choose the most appropriate phase for a given component. Furthermore we will try to study high pressure effects on the structural and electronic properties of AlInN and its phase transformation into the rocksalt phase. The AlInN comes generally in the form of heterostructure AlInN/GaN in electronic components. Its growth on the GaN layer causes the appearance of elastic stresses resulting in profound changes in its structural and electronic properties. The second part of this work will involve the study of the physical effect of these constraints. And finally after a brief introduction on architecture and on the physics of a HEMT, one will attempt to apply the above concepts to the effects on the main parameters governing the operation of this component. Two calculation methods have been used for theoretical studies: the first semi empirical tight binding method, and the second ab-initio the density functional theory. A theoretical overview of these methods is exposed as well as the calculation parameters used.