Demonstration of negative differential resistance in GaN/AlN resonant tunneling diodes at room temperature

GaN/AlN resonant tunneling diodes (RTD) were grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and negative differential resistance with peak-to-valley ratios as high as 2.15 at room temperature was demonstrated. Effect of material quality on RTDs' performance was investigated by growing RTD structures on AlN, GaN, and lateral epitaxial overgrowth GaN templates. Our results reveal that negative differential resistance characteristics of RTDs are very sensitive to material quality (such as surface roughness) and MOCVD is a suitable technique for III-nitride-based quantum devices.