Rutile germanium dioxide (r-GeO$_2$) is a recently predicted ultrawide-band-gap semiconductor with potential applications in high-power electronic devices, for which the carrier mobility is an important material parameter that controls the device eff
iciency. We apply first-principles calculations based on density functional and density functional perturbation theory to investigate carrier-phonon coupling in r-GeO$_2$ and predict its phonon-limited electron and hole mobilities as a function of temperature and crystallographic orientation. The calculated carrier mobilities at 300 K are $mu_{text{elec},perp vec{c}}$=244 cm$^2$ V$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$, $mu_{text{elec},||vec{c}}$=377 cm$^2$ V$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$, $mu_{text{hole},perp vec{c}}$=27 cm$^2$ V$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$, and $mu_{text{hole},||vec{c}}$=29 cm$^2$ V$^{-1}$ s$^{-1}$. At room temperature, carrier scattering is dominated by the low-frequency polar-optical phonon modes. The predicted Baliga figure of merit of n-type r-GeO$_2$ surpasses several incumbent semiconductors such as Si, SiC, GaN, and $beta$-Ga$_2$O$_3$, demonstrating its superior performance in high-power electronic devices.
The ultrahigh thermal conductivity of boron arsenide makes it a promising material for next-generation electronics and optoelectronics. In this work, we report measured optical properties of cubic boron arsenide crystals including the complex dielect
ric function, refractive index, and absorption coefficient in the ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared wavelength range. The data were collected at room temperature using spectroscopic ellipsometry as well as transmission and reflection spectroscopy. We further calculate the optical response using density functional and many-body perturbation theory, considering quasiparticle and excitonic corrections. The computed values for the direct and indirect band gaps (4.25 eV and 2.07 eV) agree well with the measured results (4.12 eV and 2.02 eV). Our findings contribute to the effort of using boron arsenide in novel electronic and optoelectronic applications that take advantage of its demonstrated ultrahigh thermal conductivity and predicted high ambipolar carrier mobility.
BAs is III-V semiconductor with ultra-high thermal conductivity, but many of its electronic properties are unknown. This work applies predictive atomistic calculations to investigate the properties of BAs heterostructures, such as strain effects on b
and alignments and carrier mobility, considering BAs as both a thin film and a substrate for lattice-matched materials. The results show that strain decreases the band gap independent of sign or direction. In addition, biaxial tensile strain increases the in-plane electron and hole mobilities by more than 60% compared to the unstrained values due to a reduction of the electron effective mass and of hole interband scattering. Moreover, BAs is shown to be nearly lattice-matched with InGaN and ZnSnN2, two important optoelectronic semiconductors with tunable band gaps by alloying and cation disorder, respectively. The results predict type-II band alignments and determine the absolute band offsets of these two materials with BAs. The combination of the ultra-high thermal conductivity and intrinsic p-type character of BAs, with its high electron and hole mobilities that can be further increased by tensile strain, as well as the lattice-match and the type-II band alignment with intrinsically n-type InGaN and ZnSnN2 demonstrate the potential of BAs heterostructures for electronic and optoelectronic devices.
We determine the fundamental electronic and optical properties of the high-thermal-conductivity III-V semiconductor boron arsenide (BAs) using density functional and many body perturbation theory including quasiparticle and spin-orbit coupling correc
tions. We find that the fundamental band gap is indirect with a value of 2.049 eV, while the minimum direct gap has a value of 4.135 eV. We calculate the carrier effective masses and report smaller values for the holes than the electrons, indicating higher hole mobility and easier p-type doping. The small difference between the static and high frequency dielectric constants indicates that BAs is only weakly ionic. We also observe that the imaginary part of the dielectric function exhibits a strong absorption peak, which corresponds to parallel bands in the band structure. Our estimated exciton binding energy of 43 meV indicates that excitons are relatively stable against thermal dissociation at room temperature. Our work provides theoretical insights on the fundamental electronic properties of BAs to guide experimental characterization and device applications.
