Abstract Semiconductor structures used for fundamental or device applications most often incorporate alloy materials. In “usual” or “common” III–V alloys, based on the InGaAsP or InGaAlAs material systems, the effects of compositional disorder on the electronic properties can be treated in a perturbative approach. This is not the case in the more recent nitride-based GaInAlN alloys, where the potential changes associated with the various atoms induce strong localization effects, which cannot be described perturbatively. Since the early studies of these materials and devices, disorder effects have indeed been identified to play a major role in their properties. Although many studies have been performed on the structural characterization of materials, on intrinsic electronic localization properties, and on the impact of disorder on device operation, there are still many open questions on all these topics. Taking disorder into account also leads to unmanageable problems in simulations. As a prerequisite to address material and device simulations, a critical examination of experiments must be considered to ensure that one measures intrinsic parameters as these materials are difficult to grow with low defect densities. A specific property of nitride semiconductors that can obscure intrinsic properties is the strong spontaneous and piezoelectric fields. We outline in this review the remaining challenges faced when attempting to fully describe nitride-based material systems, taking the examples of LEDs. The objectives of a better understanding of disorder phenomena are to explain the hidden phenomena often forcing one to use ad hoc parameters, or additional poorly defined concepts, to make simulations agree with experiments. Finally, we describe a novel simulation tool based on a mathematical breakthrough to solve the Schrödinger equation in disordered potentials that facilitates 3D simulations that include alloy disorder.

中文翻译：

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氮化物半导体的无序效应：对基本特性和器件特性的影响

摘要 用于基础或器件应用的半导体结构最常采用合金材料。在基于 InGaAsP 或 InGaAlAs 材料系统的“普通”或“常见” III-V 合金中，可以用微扰方法处理成分无序对电子特性的影响。在较新的基于氮化物的 GaInAlN 合金中，情况并非如此，其中与各种原子相关的电位变化会引起强烈的局域化效应，无法进行扰动描述。自从对这些材料和设备进行早期研究以来，确实已经确定无序效应在其特性中起主要作用。尽管已经对材料的结构表征、内在电子定位特性以及无序对器件操作的影响进行了许多研究，关于所有这些主题，仍有许多悬而未决的问题。将无序考虑在内也会导致模拟中出现无法处理的问题。作为解决材料和器件模拟的先决条件，必须考虑对实验进行严格检查，以确保测量内在参数，因为这些材料难以在低缺陷密度下生长。氮化物半导体的一个特殊特性可以掩盖固有特性，即强自发场和压电场。我们在这篇综述中以 LED 为例，概述了在尝试全面描述氮化物基材料系统时面临的剩余挑战。更好地理解无序现象的目标是解释隐藏的现象，这往往迫使人们使用临时参数或其他定义不清的概念，使模拟与实验相符。最后，我们描述了一种基于数学突破的新型模拟工具，用于求解无序势中的薛定谔方程，从而促进包括合金无序在内的 3D 模拟。