The effects of dislocations and Si doping on the electrical properties of n-type GaN grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) are investigated. It is found that both electron mobility and carrier concentration are strongly influenced by edge dislocations. A moderate Si doping during the GaN growth improves the electron mobility, but the best doping effect depends on the dislocation density of the sample. High quality about 4-μm-thick MOCVD-grown GaN film with a room temperature electron mobility as high as 1005cm2∕Vs is obtained by optimizing growth conditions.

The Schottky behaviour of Ni/Au contact on n-GaN was investigated under various annealing conditions by current–voltage (I–V) measurements. A non-linear fitting method was used to extract the contact parameters from the I–V characteristic curves. Experimental results indicate that high quality Schottky contact with a barrier height and ideality factor of 0.86±0.02 eV and 1.19±0.02 eV, respectively, can be obtained under 5 min annealing at 600°C in N₂ ambience.

Three green light emitting InGaN/GaN multiple quantum well (MQW) structures with different In composition grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition are investigated by the X-ray diffraction and the temperature-dependent photoluminescence (PL) measurements. It is found that when the In composition increases in the InGaN/GaN MQWs, the PL spectral bandwidth may anomalously decrease with increasing temperature. The reduction of PL spectral bandwidth may be ascribed to the enhanced non-radiative recombination process which may lower the light emission efficiency of the localized luminescent centers with shallow localization energy in the high-In-content InGaN quantum wells and also cause a reduction of integrated PL intensity.

InGaN-based blue-violet laser diodes (LDs) suffer from electron leakage into the p-type regions, which could be only partially alleviated by employing the electron blocking layer (EBL). Here, a thin undoped InGaN interlayer prior to EBL is proposed to create an additional forbidden energy range above the natural conduction band edge, which further suppresses the electron leakage and thus improve the characteristics of LDs. Numerical device simulations reveal that when the proper composition and thickness of InGaN interlayer are chosen, the electron leakage could be efficiently eliminated without inducing any severe accumulation of electrons at the interlayer, resulting in a maximum output power of the device.