Modulation Doping

Presented by,
Rohith Acharya

For,
Presentations WS 17/18
Academic and Scientific Work
Outline

 Revisiting Ohm’s law

 Scattering Mechanisms
 Quantum confinement and Two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG)
 Molecular beam epitaxy
 Discussion on main paper
 Applications
Revisiting Ohm’s Law

 Direction of electron flow

where, E is the electric field, J is the current density

e-

E Image taken from Ref[1]

where, 𝜎 is the conductivity, m* is the effective mass of the

electrons, μ is the mobility, 𝜏𝑚 is the average momentum
relaxation time

We want high relaxation time and small effective mass!

Relaxation time tau (𝜏) and mobility (μ)

 Energy dependence?
▫ In general 𝜏 depends on electron energy 
μ is temperature dependent
▫ Experimentally observed 

k k
phonon
 What do we need to calculate tau?
▫ Using Fermi’s golden rule and Linearized
Boltzmann Transport Equation within the
Relaxation time approximation impurity
▫ Initial state, final state and scattering
potential

Image taken from Ref[1]

Scattering Mechanisms

 Electron-Impurity scattering
▫ Described by a screened coulombic potential
Charged impurity

Image taken from Ref[1]

▫ Tau decreases as number of impurities increases

▫ Tau increases as the energy (temperature) increases
▫ Prominent at low temperatures
Scattering Mechanisms

 Electron-phonon scattering
▫ Vibration of atoms perturbs the electronic bands
▫ Phonons are quantized lattice vibrations
▫ Scattering described with deformation potential approximation
Image taken from Ref[2]

 Modes:
▫ Acoustic mode: 5-10 meV phonon energy
▫ Optical mode: 50-100 meV phonon energy
-
+ +
-

Optical mode Acoustic mode

Image taken from Ref[1]

Electron-Phonon scattering

 Acoustic phonon scattering  Optical phonon scattering

▫ For metals, ▫ Important for polar semiconductors at
higher temperatures (above 300K)
at temperatures below 100K

at temperatures above 100K

where
s is the speed of sound
q is the phonon wave vector
Temperature dependence of mobility in GaAs

 Initial increase in mobility with exponent 3/2

▫ Ionized impurity scattering
 Decrease in mobility with an exponent -3/2
▫ Acoustic phonon scattering
 Finally exponential decrease in mobility
▫ Polar optical phonon scattering

Can we somehow eliminate the

scattering due to impurities at
low temperature?

Image taken from Ref[2]

Quantum Confinement

We will limit ourselves to

2D systems and their
realization

Image taken from Ref[3]

Two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG)

 Electron gas free to move in 2 dimensions but confined in the 3rd.

 Usually requires a surface/interface between two materials
Image taken from Ref[5]
▫ For ex: interface between semiconductor and insulator  MOSFET
▫ Electrons can move in a plane perpendicular to the interface
▫ Limitation: Interface roughness scattering, impurities,…

Can we make a 2DEG at interface

between two crystalline semiconductors?

MOSFET under strong inversion.

Image taken from Ref[2]
2 Dimensional Electron Gas (2DEG) and heterointerfaces

 Heterojunctions of III-V semiconductor  GaAs/AlGaAs

AlGaAs GaAs
 Cause  Band Alignment (n+) (i)

Ec
 Crystalline interface
Ec
▫ Lattice constant of GaAs : 0.56533 nm
Ev
▫ Lattice constant of AlAs : 0.56611 nm Ev
▫ Lattice constant of AlxGa1-xAs : 0.56533 + 0.00078x nm

(n+) AlGaAs - GaAs heterointerface.

Image taken from Ref[4]

Modulation Doping

 Separate charge carriers from parent impurities in different planes!

▫ Electrons transferred from the impurity to the 2D channel
▫ Prevention of scattering from charged donors

Images taken from Ref[5]

 We have removed impurities from the channel  Low temperature µ should increase!
Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE)

 Ultrahigh vacuum epitaxy technique for thin-film

deposition of single crystals.
 Epitaxy comes from Greek for ‘above’ (epi) and ‘in an
ordered manner’ (taxis)
 Developed in Bell Labs by Alfred Y. Cho and John R.
Arthur, Jr around 1968
 Features
▫ High or ultra-high vacuum (10-8 or 10-12 Torr)
▫ High-speed pumps order of (order of 102 -103 l/s)
▫ Nanostructures can be built with precise
controlled composition and atomic precision
▫ Slow deposition technique – around 1µm/hour
▫ Unintentional impurity concentration can be as
low as 1013 cm-3

Image taken from Ref[6]

 MBE: Steps involved

 Start with the base substrate (single crystal), like Si, Ge, GaAs
 Heat the substrate (~650 °C for GaAs)
 Fire precise beams of atoms/molecules at the substrate using
guns called effusion cells from pure sources
 Molecules land on the surface of the substrate, condense, and
build up very slowly and systematically into ultra-thin layers

Cross-sectional TEM image of a 7nm

AlAs, 5nm GaAs 50 period superlattice
grown at Purdue. The bright regions
are the GaAs layers while the darker
regions correspond to AlAs.

Image taken from Ref[7]

Image taken from Ref[8]
Discussion on the paper
Introduction of Spacer layer

 At the time, reported low temperature mobilities for

AlGaAs-GaAs modulation doped interfaces  several
10^4 cm2/Vs for electron densities of 1016 – 1017 cm-3
▫ Only wide-gap material (AlGaAs) intentionally
doped
▫ Band discontinuity results in lateral electron
transfer
▫ Due to spatial separation of electrons from their
donors
 Introduction of ‘spacer’ layer of undoped AlGaAs
expected to further increase spatial separation

Image taken from Ref[9]

Results

 3 samples with different thickness of spacer compared

▫ Grown using MBE
▫ Hall bar measurement
▫ Low magnetic field (~50mT) and low voltage (10mV)
Results

 3 samples with different thickness of spacer compared

▫ Grown using MBE
▫ Hall bar measurement
▫ Low magnetic field (~50mT) and low voltage (10mV)
 Observations
▫ Monotonic increase in hall mobility with spacer width
▫ Low temperature mobility close to 100 000 cm2/Vs achieved
▫ Theoretical agreement considering inter subband scattering

Images taken
from Ref[9]
Improvements and Consequence

 Large Mean free paths

▫ For n=5x1011 cm-2 and m=106 cm2/Vs (typical at ~10K),
mean free paths of ≈100 µm !!
▫ Metals  ≈ 10nm
▫ Typical semiconductors  ≈ 100 nm

 Playground for new physics

▫ Quantum hall effect
▫ Fractional Quantum hall effect
▫ …

Images taken from Ref[10]

Applications
CRAY-3

 Cray Research was a supercomputer manufacturer

 Cray-3 was the first major application of GaAs
semiconductors in computing
 3 times performance improvement (compared to Cray-2 )
due to use of GaAs

Seymour Cray poses behind a Cray-3 processor tank.

Image taken from Ref[11]
High Electron Mobility Transistor (HEMT)

 HEMT’s are field effect transistors

 Epitaxially grown layers with different Eg
▫ AlGaAs  Wide bandgap material
▫ InGaAs  Low bandgap material
 Two hetero-interface to create a quantum
well
 Backside doping can be used to get additional
carriers

Image taken from Ref[12]

HEMT Band Diagram

 We need high Id and transconductance

 Delta doping
▫ To get good gate control
▫ To get enough carriers in the channel
 Dopant layer is usually made of silicon
▫ The upper limit of activated sheet doping
concentration is in the order of 4x1012 cm-2

Image taken from Ref[3]

HEMT: Controlling the channel

 Gate voltage control

 Positive voltage to AlGaAs  Reverse Bias
▫ More band-bending  more carriers
 Negative voltage to AlGaAs  Forward Bias
▫ Less carriers and eventually 2DEG disappears

Image taken from Ref[3]

Band Deformation

 To study the channel formation  self-consistent solution to coupled Poisson & Schrodinger equations

Poisson Equation

Schrodinger Equation

Image taken from Ref[13]

Applications of HEMT

 Any application where high gain and low noise at high frequency needed
▫ Microwave and millimeter wave communication
▫ RADAR
▫ Radio astronomy
 Used in MMIC (Monolithic microwave integrated circuit)
 Power switching transistors for voltage converter applications
References

1. Houssa, M. (2017). Electronic Transport in Solids. KU Leuven, Belgium. Lecture.

2. Lundstrom, Mark. Fundamentals of Carrier Transport. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
3. Heyns, M. (2016). Material Physics and Technology for Nanoelectronics. KU Leuven, Belgium. Lecture.
4. Houssa, M. (2016). Mesoscopic Physics. KU Leuven, Belgium. Lecture.
5. Stö rmer, H. Nobel lecture (8 December 1998); http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1998/stormer-lecture.html
6. MBE deserves a place in the history books. Nature nanotechnology, 2(5), 259-261.
7. Manfra, M. J. (2014). Molecular beam epitaxy of ultra-high-quality AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures: enabling physics in low-dimensional
electronic systems. Annu. Rev. Condens. Matter Phys., 5(1), 347-373. McCray, W. P. (2007).
8. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_beam_epitaxy
9. Störmer, H. L., Pinczuk, A., Gossard, A. C., & Wiegmann, W. (1981). Influence of an undoped (AlGa) As spacer on mobility
enhancement in GaAs‐(AlGa) As superlattices. Applied Physics Letters, 38(9), 691-693.
10. Pfeiffer, L., & West, K. W. (2003). The role of MBE in recent quantum Hall effect physics discoveries. Physica E: Low-dimensional
systems and Nanostructures, 20(1), 57-64.
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cray-3
12. Brech, H. (1998). Optimization of GaAs based High Electron Mobility Transistors by Numerical Simulations. PhD. Technischen
Universität Wien.
URL: http://www.iue.tuwien.ac.at/phd/brech/ch_2_3.htm
13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-electron-mobility_transistor
THANK YOU!

Time for
Questions 
Backup Slides
Revisiting Ohm’s Law

 Direction of electron flow

where, E is the electric field, J is the current density

e-


where, n is the concentration of electrons, e is the electronic

charge, vd is the average drift velocity of the electrons
E Image taken from Ref[1]

We want high
where, 𝜎 is the conductivity, m* is the effective mass of the relaxation time and
electrons, μ is the mobility, 𝜏𝑚 is the average momentum
small effective mass!
relaxation time
Relaxation time tau (𝜏) and mobility (μ)

 Energy dependence?
▫ In general 𝜏 depends on electron energy  μ is temperature dependent

 How to calculate tau?



k k
▫ Fermi’s golden rule phonon

2   2
 
   
C (k , k ' )  k V k '   (k )   (k ' )

impurity
• Linearized Boltzmann Transport Equation and
Relaxation time approximation

1   
   C (k , k ) dk 
 (k )
C  scattering rate, V  scattering potential, k/k’ are initial/final electron states and 𝜀 is energy
Scattering Mechanisms

 Electron-Impurity scattering
▫ Described by a screened coulombic potential
Charged impurity

Screening due to electrons

attracted by the ionized impurity

▫ Tau decreases as number of impurities increases

▫ Tau increases as the energy (temperature) increases
Scattering Mechanisms

 Electron-phonon scattering
▫ Vibration of atoms perturbs the electronic bands
▫ Phonons are quantized lattice vibrations
▫ Scattering described with deformation potential approximation

 Modes:
▫ Acoustic mode: 5-10 meV phonon energy
▫ Optical mode: 50-100 meV phonon energy
-
+ +
-

Optical mode Acoustic mode

Electron-Phonon scattering

 Acoustic phonon scattering  Optical phonon scattering

▫ Scattering potential ▫ Scattering potential

▫ For metals, ▫ Important for polar semiconductors at

higher temperatures (above 300K)
at temperatures below 100K

at temperatures above 100K

s is the speed of sound

q is the phonon wave vector