This paper presents the results of a numerical analysis of nitride-based edge-emitting lasers with an InGaN/GaN active region designed for continuous wave room temperature emission of green and blue light. The main goal was to investigate whether the indium thin oxide (ITO) layer can serve as an effective optical confinement improving operation of these devices. Simulations were performed with the aid of a self-consistent thermal-electrical-optical model. Results obtained for green- and blue-emitting lasers were compared. The ITO layer in the p-type cladding was found to effectively help confine the laser mode in the active regions of the devices and to decrease the threshold current density.

This paper describes practical issues related to control of the active power buffer (APB) developed for a 2 kVA single-phase inverter. The buffer is designed using the latest GaN HEMTs controlled with triangular current mode to reduce switching losses, however, the switching frequency should be limited to 1 MHz. In the case of the presented analogue-digital controller, frequency is influenced by a reference current of the APB and circuit. Therefore, the operation at start-up and shut-down is especially challenging. A modified control algorithm that also includes pre-charging and discharging process of the energy buffer is presented and experimentally verified by series of tests of the 2 kVA GaN based inverter with the APB.

We report on the photoresponse dependence on the terahertz radiation intensity in ALGaN/GaN HEMTs. We show that the ALGaN/GaN HEMT can be used as a THz detector in CW and in pulsed regime up to radiation intensity of several kW/cm². The dynamic range in the pulsed regime of detection can be more than 2 decades. We observed that the photoresponse of the HEMT could have a compound composition if two independent parts of the transistor are involved in the detection process; this result indicates that a more simple one channel device may be preferable on the detection purpose.

The effect of modifications in epi-side (top) gold metallization on a thermal performance and on power roll-over of blue-vio- let III-N-based p-up edge-emitting ridge-waveguide laser diode (RW EEL) was explored in this paper. The calculations were carried out using a two-dimensional self-consistent electrical-thermal model combined with a simplified optical model tuned to a RW EEL fabricated in the Institute of High Pressure Physics (Unipress). Our results suggest that with proper modifica- tions in the III-N-based RW EEL, excluding modifications in its inner structure, it is possible to considerably improve the thermal performance and, thus, increase the maximal output power.

The paper deals with hardware solution of a fully digital dead-time generator. The circuit is applicable to the H-bridges based on any type of semiconductor switching devices including SiC, IGBT, Si-MOSFET and up-to-date GaN HEMTs. The generation of dead-times is ensured by commercially available silicon delay lines. High temperature stability is obtained by self-compensation of propagation delay of logic elements thanks to the symmetry of design topology. The circuit can be set-up to generate dead-times in the range from 10 ns to 500 ns. Longer dead-times are also available by simple cascading of the silicon delay lines. The key motivation for development of the circuit was unavailability of ready to use integrated solutions on the market. Moreover, contrary to the other solutions the proposed circuit is immune to prospective oscillations of an input PWM signal. The paper brings a detailed analysis of the circuit principle, results of the verification of a sample solution and an example of practical application as well.

This paper presents an analysis and simulation studies of three-phase matrix converter with GaN HEMT bidirectional switches with predictive control of grid currents and converter output currents. Two methods of grid currents shaping are described and compared. The first method is based on calculations of instantaneous grid reactive power and the second one uses the active power of the load. The analyzed converter works with the resistive-inductive load, and from the grid side the LC filter with damping resistor has been used.

The electron field and photo-field emission from GaN nanostructures has been analyzed in this review. In order to explain the obtained experimental results, a model was proposed taking into account the change in carrier concentration distribution in the main and the satellite valley during the emission process. The lowering of work function (due to the increased number of carriers in the satellite valley) can explain the decrease in the Fowler-Nordheim plot slope. It was shown that the energy difference between the main and satellite valley in GaN was decreased in the case of quantum confinement, thus increasing the probability of electron transition from Γ to X valley at same electric fields.

Investigations of electron photo-field emission demonstrated that the Fowler–Nordheim plots of the emission current have different slopes for nonilluminated and illuminated devices. A model based on the electron emission from valleys having different specific electron affinities is proposed to explain the experimental results. In the absence of illumination the emission takes place only from the lower valley. Upon UV illumination and presence of a high electric field at the emitter tip, the upper valley of the conduction band appears to be occupied by electrons generated at the valence band.

The impact ionization in semiconductor materials is a process that produces multiple charge carrier pairs from a single excitation. This mechanism constitutes a possible road to increase the efficiency of the p-n and p-i-n solar cells junctions. Our study considers the structure of InN/InGaN quantum dot solar cell in the calculation. In this work, we study the effect of indium concentration and temperature on the coefficient of the material type parameter of the impact ionization process for a p(InGaN)-n(InGaN) and p(InGaN)- i(QDs-InN)-n(InGaN) solar cell. Next, we investigate the effect of perturbation such as temperature and indium composition on conventional solar cell’s (p(InGaN)-n(InGaN)) and solar cells of the third generation with quantum dot intermediate band IBSC (p(InGaN-i(QD-InN)-n(InGaN)) by analyzing their behaviour in terms of efficiency of energy conversion at the presence of the impact ionization process. Our numerical results show that the efficiency is strongly influenced by all of these parameters. It is also demonstrated that decreased with the increase of indium concentration and temperature which contributes to an overall improvement of the conversion efficiency.