Growth and Characterization of GaN/AlN Resonant Tunneling Diodes for High‐Performance Nonvolatile Memory

GaN/AlN resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) are studied to realize a high‐speed nonvolatile memory based on the intersubband transactions and electron accumulation in the quantum well, which has the potential to operate at picosecond time scales. The crystal quality of GaN/AlN RTDs is improved by chang...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inPhysica status solidi. A, Applications and materials science Vol. 218; no. 3
Main Authors Nagase, Masanori, Takahashi, Tokio, Shimizu, Mitsuaki
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Weinheim Wiley Subscription Services, Inc 01.02.2021
Subjects
Accumulation
Aluminum nitride
Buffer layers
Dislocation density
Gallium nitrides
GaN
Intersubband transitions
nonvolatile memory
Quantum wells
Resonant tunneling
Surface roughness
Tunnel diodes
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Summary:GaN/AlN resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs) are studied to realize a high‐speed nonvolatile memory based on the intersubband transactions and electron accumulation in the quantum well, which has the potential to operate at picosecond time scales. The crystal quality of GaN/AlN RTDs is improved by changing the growth conditions and structure of the buffer layer. The surface roughness and dislocation density of the GaN/AlN RTDs are successfully suppressed, and clear ON/OFF switching due to intersubband transitions is observed by inputting pulse voltage sequences. However, the voltages for write and erase operations are changed by improving the crystal quality of GaN/AlN RTDs. The theoretical analysis of resonant levels in the GaN/AlN RTDs indicates that the voltages for write and erase operations are very sensitive to the well and barrier widths and the density of electrons accumulating in the quantum well. Based on the results, the design of GaN/AlN RTDs for higher‐performance nonvolatile memory operations is investigated. This article reports on a high‐speed nonvolatile memory using GaN/AlN resonant tunneling diodes (RTDs), called resonant tunneling random‐access memory (RT‐RAM). For use of RT‐RAM in the L1 cache memory in computer systems, the crystal quality of GaN/AlN RTDs is improved by changing the buffer layer. In addition, GaN/AlN RTD designs for low voltage operation are investigated.
ISSN:1862-6300
1862-6319
DOI:10.1002/pssa.202000495