Revealing of the transition from n- to p-type conduction of InN:Mg by photoconductivity effect measurement

• Published in: Scientific reports Vol. 4; no. 1; p. 4371
• Main Authors: Guo, L., Wang, X. Q., Zheng, X. T., Yang, X. L., Xu, F. J., Tang, N., Lu, L. W., Ge, W. K., Shen, B., Dmowski, L. H., Suski, T.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London Nature Publishing Group UK 13.03.2014; Nature Publishing Group
• Subjects: 639/166/987; 639/301/1005/1007; Humanities and Social Sciences; multidisciplinary; Science
• ISSN: 2045-2322; 2045-2322
• DOI: 10.1038/srep04371

We report evidence of the transition from n- to p-type conduction of InN with increasing Mg dopant concentration by using photoconductivity (PC) measurement at room temperature. This transition is depicted as a conversion from negative to positive PC under above-bandgap optical excitation. The n- to p-type transition in InN:Mg is further confirmed by thermopower measurements. PC detection method is a bulk effect since the optical absorption of the surface electron accumulation is negligibly low due to its rather small thickness and thus shows advantage to detect p-type conduction. This technique is certainly helpful to study p-type doping of InN, which is still a subject of discussions.