Effect of Au distribution in NiO/Au film on the ohmic contact formation to p-type GaN

The distribution of Au and NiO in NiO/Au ohmic contact on p-type GaN was investigated in this work. Au (5 nm) films were deposited on p-GaN substrates by magnetron sputtering. Some of the Au films were preheated in N₂ ambient to agglomerate into semi-connected structure (abbreviated by agg-Au); others were not preheated and remained the continuous (abbreviated by cont-Au). A NiO film (5 nm) was deposited on both types of samples, and all samples were subsequently annealed in N₂ ambient at the temperatures ranging from 100 to 500 °C. The surface morphology, phases, and cross-sectional microstructure were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, glancing incident angle x-ray diffraction, and transmission electron microscopy. I-V measurement on the contacts indicates that only the 400 °C annealed NiO/cont-Au/p-GaN sample exhibits ohmic behavior and its specific contact resistance (ρ_c) is 8.93 × 10^-3 Ω cm². After annealing, Au and NiO contact to GaN individually in the NiO/agg-Au/p-GaN system while the Au and NiO layers become tangled in the NiO/cont-Au/p-GaN system. As a result, the highly tangled NiO-Au structure shall be the key to achieve the ohmic behavior for NiO/cont-Au/p-GaN system.