Investigation of hot electrons and hot phonons generated within an AlN/GaN high electron mobility transistor

We review our recent results obtained on an AlN/GaN-based high-electron-mobility transistor. The temperature of the electrons drifting under a relatively-high electric field is significantly higher than the lattice temperature (i.e., the hot electrons are generated). These hot electrons are produced through the Fröhlich interaction between the drifting electrons and long-lived longitudinal-optical phonons. By fitting electric field vs. electron temperature deduced from the measurements of photoluminescence spectra to a theoretical model, we have deduced the longitudinal-optical-phonon emission time for each electron is to be on the order of 100 fs. We have also measured the decay time constant for LO phonons to be about 4.2 ps. An electric field present in a GaN/AlN heterostructure can bring both the first-order and second-order Raman scattering processes into strong resonances. The resonant Stokes and anti-Stokes Raman scattering results in the increase and decrease of non-equilibrium longitudinal-optical phonon temperatures, respectively. Moreover, the phonon temperature measured from the Raman scattering is increased with an applied electric field at a much higher rate than the lattice temperature due to the presence of field-induced non-equilibrium longitudinal-optical phonons.