The I1 intrinsic basal stacking faults were acknowledged as the principal defects observed on {11•0} (a-plane) and {1¯1•0} (m-plane) grown GaN. Their importance was established by recent experimental results, which correlated the partial dislocations bounding I1 basal stacking faults to the luminescence characteristics of GaN. Partial dislocations were also found to play a critical role in the alleviation of misfit strain in hetero-epitaxially grown non-polar and semipolar films. In the present study, the energetics and the electronic structure of twelve edge and mixed 1/6<20•3> partial dislocation configurations were investigated by first principles calculations. The specific partial dislocation cores of the dislocation loop bounding the I1 basal stacking fault were identified for III-rich and N-rich growth conditions. The core structures of partial dislocations induced multiple shallow and deep states, attributed to the low coordinated core atoms, indicating that the cores were electrically active. In contrast to edge type threading dislocations no strain induced states were found.

Electronic Structure of 1/6<20¯23> Partial Dislocations in Wurtzite GaN. J.Kioseoglou, E.Kalesaki, L.Lymperakis, J.Neugebauer, P.Komninou, T.Karakostas: Journal of Applied Physics, 2011, 109[8], 083511