Do all screw dislocations cause leakage in GaN-based devices?

Screw dislocations are generally considered to be one of the main causes of GaN-based device leakage, but so far, nearly no reports have focused on the effects of open-core screw dislocations on device leakage currents experimentally. In this paper, we use a conductive atomic force microscope to characterize the electronic properties of threading dislocations (TDs) in the GaN layer. The full-core screw dislocations and mixed dislocations are found to provide conductive paths for device leakage currents. In terms of the contribution to device leakage currents, the edge and open-core screw dislocations have smaller effects than the full-core screw dislocations and mixed dislocations. We use isotropic linear elasticity theory and density functional theory calculations to model the core atomic structures of TDs and calculate the corresponding electronic structures. The results show that screw dislocations with full-core structures are found to introduce both deep and shallow energy states within the energy gap dispersedly, while the open-core screw dislocations and the most edge dislocations introduce only shallow energy states. The calculated electronic structures of each type of dislocation are systematically compared and correlated with experimental observations. Our findings demonstrate that full-core screw dislocations and mixed dislocations in the GaN layer have a far more detrimental impact on device leakage than edge and open-core screw dislocations. Published under license by AIP Publishing.