Mg doping and native N vacancy effect on electronic and transport properties of AlN nanowires

The effects of Mg doping(MgAl) and native N vacancy(VN) on the electronic structures and transport properties of Al N nanowire(Al NNW) were theoretically investigated by using density functional theory. Either the MgAl defect or the VN defect prefers to be formed on the Al NNW surfaces. Both MgAl and VN defects could increase the conductivity owing to introducing a defect band inside the band gap of Al N and split the Al N band gap into two subgaps. The defect concentration has little influence on the magnitude of the subgaps. The MgAl serves as a shallow acceptor rendering the nanowire a p-type conductor. The VN introduces a deep donor state enabling the nanowire an n-type conductor. The MgAl systems exhibit higher conductivity than the VN ones owing to the narrow subgaps of MgAl systems. The conductivity is roughly proportional to the defect concentration in the MgAl and VN defect systems. When the MgAl and VN coexist, the hole state of the MgAl defect and the electron state of the VN defect will compensate each other and their coupling state appears just above the valence-band maximum leading to a little decrease of the band gap compared with the pure Al NNW, which is unfavorable for the enhancing of the conductivity.