Situated in the historic city of Nottingham, the School of Physics and Astronomy has had a long and successful involvement in Nitride semiconductor research. Group III-Nitride semiconductors are used for both electronic and opto-electronic device applications. Electronic devices based on nitride semiconductors such as heterojunction field effect transistors will be used for mobile phone communication systems and in advanced electronics for aviation. Optoelectronic devices including blue, green and amber light emitting diodes (LEDs) are already on the market, green and amber LEDs being used in traffic lights. Blue/UV LEDs are also being used as the basis of a new generation of white light sources. Blue/UV laser diodes (LDs), which are currently being developed, will be used in the next generation high density digital versatile disk (HD-DVD) systems. UV sensitive photodetectors have potential civilian and military applications. In a recent survey, the projected market sales for nitride semiconductors in 2000 and 2006 were $400M and $3B per annum respectively, sales for 2000 already exceed the predicted value. The commercial importance of Nitride semiconductors is now firmly established and research in this area is thus of strategic importance to the UK electronic industry

Additional structural characterisation of Nitride semiconductors and contacts is undertaken in the School of Mechanical, Materials, Manufacturing Engineering and Management (M3EM). Details of the work in the School of M3EM can be found under the Advance Materials entry.

During the brief period of this project we have produced some of the best films of GaN grown by MBE available worldwide. In particular, in collaboration with Professor Porowski at UNIPRESS, we have demonstrated that defect-free GaN layers and AlGaN/GaN multiquantum wells can be both grown by MBE on low defect density GaN substrates. We can grow any combination of (AlGaIn)(AsN) with n and p doping as appropriate. Our most recent development involves the growth of magnetic nitride semiconductors using Mn-doped GaN. As a result of our work, we have published a total of more than 100 papers on GaN related topics.

We have developed extensive national and international collaborations at industrial and government laboratories including: Aixtron, CNRS-CHEA, DERA, Epichem, GEC-Marconi (GMMT), IQE (EPI International), Infineon (Siemens), Ioffe, Oxford Applied Research, Philips, Riber, Sharp Laboratories of Europe, Staib Gmb, Thomas-Swan, Thomson-CSF and UNIPRESS). We also have collaborative programmes with academic groups at Arizona, Bath, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Essex, Montpellier, UCL and UMIST working in this field.