First-Principle Investigation of Vacancy Effect on the AlInN Electronic Properties

Group III-Nitride semiconductors have been extensively studied for solid state lighting applications as well as power and communications applications. Particularly recent interests emerge to employ AlInN/GaN transistors in the space environment. However, the electronic systems employing III-Nitride transistors are exposed to fluxes of radiation sources such as proton, neutron and gamma rays, leading to material degradation that significantly affects the performance. Recent work revealed creation of vacancies and dislocations in AlInN materials after irradiation of heavy ions, but vacancy effect onto the material properties is not well understood. Investigating the properties of III-Nitride materials with vacancies is thus important to advance the understanding of radiation effect on the materials. In this work, we present the analysis of electronic properties of AlInN alloy with vacancies using the First-Principle Density Function Theory (DFT) calculations. The effect of single and cluster vacancies in AlInN are analyzed. Our findings show that the vacancies in AlInN alloy result in significant changes to the band structure including the band gap and effective mass. The effect of vacancy onto the electronic properties of AlInN alloys will be further discussed in detail.