Development of ohmic contacts for compound semiconductors

Recent several breakthroughs in wide energy gap compound semiconductor materials have inspired many researchers to develop new electronic devices capable of high temperature and/or high power operation, blue light-emitting-diodes, and ultra-short wavelength laser-diodes. One of the restrictions for mass production of these devices is lack of low resistance ohmic contact materials which satisfy the device requirements. In this paper current status of development of ohmic contacts for n-GaAs, p-InP, p-GaN and p-ZnSe are briefly reviewed, and then the recent progress of the contacts to n-GaAs is described.