Electrical and structural properties of the new III-N alloys for optoelectronics devices ; Etude des propriétés structurales et électroniques de nouveaux matériaux à base d'alliages III-N pour l'optoélectronique

This thesis work concerns the electrical and optical characterization of new III-N nitride alloys for optoelectronics and the optimization of ohmic and Schottky contacts on these materials. The first part of this thesis was related to the realization of metallic contacts, particularly difficult for these high bandgap materials, by the optimization of the surface treatment, multi-layer metallization and thermal annealing. We developed annealing processes at relatively low temperature (between 200°C and 500°C) and studied the effect of the chemical treatment and annealing in order to find the optimal conditions for ohmic contacts. We obtained for instance Ti/Al contacts with an excellent ohmicity and used Pt to process Schottky functional diodes. The second part of this thesis was related to the study of the electronic and structural properties of the new BGaN alloy grown by MOVPE in our laboratory. The electric characterization showed for the first time a dramatic increase in the resistivity associated to the decrease of the free carriers? concentration when the composition of boron in BGaN increases. The variation of the resistivity in BGaN with respect to the temperature was analyzed by using a theoretical model which takes into account the free carriers? interaction with impurities and phonons and the variation of resistivity with boron in BGaN was discussed in this framework and linked to a compensation phenomenon of the residual dopants. On the other hand a very interesting correlation was carried out between Raman and electrical results through the phonon-plasmon coupling ; Cette thèse portait sur la caractérisation électrique et optique de nouveaux matériaux à base d'alliages III-N pour l?optoélectronique et la mise en ?uvre de procédés de réalisation des contacts ohmiques et Schottky sur ces alliages. Le premier volet de cette thèse de concernait la maîtrise des contacts métalliques, particulièrement délicate dans le cas de ces matériaux à large bande interdite où il faut optimiser les prétraitements de ...