The regulation of the withstand voltage performance of ZnO/GaN vertical heterostructures using external electric...

The band gap of the heterostructure determines the withstand voltage. It is very important to regulate the band gap of heterojunctions and to investigate their electrical properties by applying external electric field. Based on density functional theory (DFT), ZnO/GaN vertical heterostructures with two stacking configurations (AB/BA and AB/AB, named H₁ and H₂, respectively) are constructed. The external electric field and vacancy defects of Zn, Ga, O and N atoms (V_Zn, V_Ga, V_O and V_N) are applied to analyze the electrical properties. The band gap can be tuned from 2.07 eV to 0 eV in H₁ and 1.53 eV-0 eV in H₂. As the electric field increases, H₁ has stronger withstand voltage (-0.84-0.56 V/Å) than H₂ (-0.26-0.26 V/Å). In addition, the structures deform obviously with the effect of vacancy defects, but remain stable. The presence of V_Ga and V_N enables H₁ and H₂ to exhibits metal conductivity and V_O change the band types of H₁ and H₂ from direct to indirect. The results of charge density difference (CDD) prove that a zero potential region and a weak electric field occur at the position of V_Zn and V_O, respectively. Likewise, the external electric field is applied to the defective heterostructures. The bandgap also exhibits strong tunability, and the heterostructure with V_O has the largest electric field modulation width. The above results indicate that ZnO/GaN exhibits excellent electrical properties with the influence of V_O, which represents potential applications in electronic devices.