Kavli Affiliate: Austin J. Minnich
| First 5 Authors: Benjamin Hatanpää, Austin J. Minnich, , ,
| Summary:
Cubic boron nitride (c-BN) is an ultrawide-bandgap semiconductor of
significant interest for high-frequency and high-power electronics applications
owing to its high saturation drift velocity and high electric breakdown field.
Beyond transistors, devices exploiting the valley degree of freedom or negative
differential resistance are of keen interest. While diamond has been found to
have potential for these applications, c-BN has not been considered owing to a
lack of knowledge of the relevant charge transport properties. Here, we report
a study of the high-field transport and noise properties of c-BN using
first-principles calculations. We find that c-BN exhibits an abrupt region of
negative differential resistance (NDR) below 140 K, despite the lack of
multi-valley band structure typically associated with NDR. This feature is
found to arise from a strong energy dependence of the scattering rates
associated with optical phonon emission. The high optical phonon energy also
leads to an intervalley scattering time rivaling that of diamond. The negative
differential resistance and long intervalley scattering time indicate the
potential of c-BN for transferred-electron and valleytronic devices,
respectively.
| Search Query: ArXiv Query: search_query=au:”Austin J. Minnich”&id_list=&start=0&max_results=3