Electrical properties of ScN(111) layers grown on semi-insulating GaN(0001) by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy

We investigate the electrical properties of nominally undoped, 10-40-nm-thick ScN(111) layers grown on nearly lattice-matched GaN:Fe/Al 2 O 3 (0001) templates by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy. Hall-effect measurements yield electron concentrations of 0.7-3.1 x 10 19 cm -3 and mobilities of 50-160 cm 2 V -1 s -1 at room temperature. The temperature-dependent (4-360 K) conductivity exhibits two distinct regimes, suggesting two-band conduction in an impurity band and the conduction band. Assuming a single shallow donor in ScN and employing the standard two-band conduction model, we extract the carrier density and mobility in these bands. The results reveal nondegenerate characteristics for a 40-nm-thick layer, while thinner layers are weakly degenerate. For the nondegenerate layer, the donor ionization energy amounts to approximately 12 meV. The electron mobility of the layers is limited by ionized-impurity scattering and phonon scattering at low and high temperatures, respectively. Fits with an expression for optical phonon scattering developed for weakly degenerate semiconductors return an effective phonon energy of (61 +/- 5) meV, a value in between the energies of the longitudinal optical ( approximate to 84 meV) and transverse optical ( approximate to 45 meV) phonon modes in ScN.