Contactless electroreflectance (CER) has been applied to study the Fermi-level position on c-plane GaN surface in Van Hoof structures grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE). A clear CER resonance followed by strong Franz-Keldysh oscillation (FKO) of various periods was clearly observed for the series of samples of different thicknesses (30, 50, and 70 nm) of undoped GaN layer. The built-in electric field in this layer has been determined from the period of GaN-related FKO. A good agreement between the calculated and measured electric fields has been found for the Fermi-level located ∼0.4 and ∼0.3 eV below the conduction band for the MBE and MOVPE samples, respectively.

Two series of N- and Ga-face GaN Van Hoof structures were grown by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy to study the surface potential barrier by contactless electroreflectance (CER). A clear CER resonance followed by strong Franz-Keldysh oscillation of period varying with the thickness of undoped GaN layer was observed for these structures. This period was much shorter for N-polar structures that means smaller surface potential barrier in these structures than in Ga-polar structures. From the analysis of built-in electric field it was determined that the Fermi-level is located 0.27 ± 0.05 and 0.60 ± 0.05 eV below the conduction band for N- and Ga-face GaN surface, respectively.

GaN substrates grown by the ammonothermal method are analyzed by Fast Fourier Transformation Spectroscopy in order to study the impact of doping (both n- and p-type) on their transparency in the near-infrared, mid-infrared, and terahertz spectral range. It is shown that the introduction of dopants causes a decrease in transparency of GaN substrates in a broad spectral range which is attributed to absorption on free carriers (n-type samples) or dopant ionization (p-type samples). In the mid-infrared the transparency cut-off, which for a semi-insulating GaN is at ~7 µm due to an absorption on a second harmonic of optical phonons, shifts towards shorter wavelengths due to an absorption on free carriers up to ~1 µm at n ~ 10²⁰ cm⁻³ doping level. Moreover, a semi-insulating GaN crystal shows good transparency in the 1–10 THz range, while for n-and p-type crystal, the transparency in this spectral region is significantly quenched below 1%. In addition, it is shown that in the visible spectral region n-type GaN substrates with a carrier concentration below 10¹⁸ cm⁻³ are highly transparent with the absorption coefficient below 3 cm⁻¹ at 450 nm, a satisfactory condition for light emitting diodes and laser diodes operating in this spectral range.