An investigation of long and short time-constant persistent photoconductivity in undoped GaN grown by rf-plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy

Photoconductance decay and spectral photoconductance measurements were made on a set of ten undoped layers of GaN grown by rf-plasma MBE. The layers, also characterized by Hall, photoluminescence and reflectance measurements, represented a wide variety in electrical and optical properties, and several were grown under atomic hydrogen. Spectral photoconductance indicated transitions at 1.0-1.1, 1.92, 2.15, 3.08 and 3.2-3.4 eV. All layers exhibited persistent photoconductivity to some degree. In contrast with previous reports, a clear correlation was not observed between persistent photoconductivity and yellow luminescence or, indeed, with any measurement made. Analysis of photoconductance decay indicates that more than one type of persistent photoconductivity may be present.