CROSS-DISCIPLINARY PHYSICS AND RELATED AREAS OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY |
|
|
|
|
Improvement of AlN Film Quality by Controlling the Coalescence of Nucleation Islands in Plasma-Assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy |
ZHANG Chen, HAO Zhi-Biao, REN Fan, HU Jian-Nan, LUO Yi
|
State Key Laboratory on Integrated Optoelectronics/Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology, Department of Electronic Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084 |
|
Cite this article: |
ZHANG Chen, HAO Zhi-Biao, REN Fan et al 2010 Chin. Phys. Lett. 27 058101 |
|
|
Abstract The influence of nucleation coalescence on the crystalline quality of AlN films grown on sapphire by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy is investigated. The coalescence speed is controlled by the V/Ⅲ ratio chosen for the growth after nucleation. A slightly Al-rich condition, corresponding to slow coalescence, can significantly reduce the density of edge threading dislocation (TD), which is found to be dominant in AlN epilayers. The cross-sectional TEM image of the AlN epilayer grown under this condition clearly reveals an automatically formed boundary where an abrupt decrease of edge TD density occurs.
|
Keywords:
81.15.-z
|
|
Received: 28 December 2009
Published: 23 April 2010
|
|
PACS: |
81.15.-z
|
(Methods of deposition of films and coatings; film growth and epitaxy)
|
|
|
|
|
[1] Strite S and Morkoc H 1992 J. Vac. Sci. Technol. B 10 1237 [2] Nishida T, Kobayashi N and Ban T 2003 Appl. Phys. Lett. 82 1 [3] Shealy J R, Kaper V, Tilak V, Prunty T, Smart J A, Green B and Eastman L F 2002 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter. 14 3499 [4] Chen Z, Newman S, Brown D, Chung R, Keller S, Mishra U K, Denbaars S P and Nakamura S 2008 Appl. Phys. Lett. 93 191906 [5] Bai J, Dudley M, Sun W H, Wang H M and Asif Khan M 2006 Appl. Phys. Lett. 88 051903 [6] Imura M, Nakano K, Kitano T, Fujimoto N, Narita G, Okada N, Balakrishnan K, Iwaya M, Kamiyama S, Amano H, Akasaki I, Shimono K, Noro T, Takagi T and Bandoh A 2006 Appl. Phys. Lett. 89 221901 [7] Peng M Z, Guo L W, Zhang J, Yu N S, Zhu X L, Yan J F, Ge B H, Jia H Q, Chen H and Zhou J M 2008 Chin. Phys. Lett. 25 2265 [8] Shen X Q, Tanizu Y, Ide T and Okumura H 2003 Phys. Status Solidi C 0 2511 [9] Fälth J F, Davidsson S K, Liu X Y and Andersson T G 2005 Appl. Phys. Lett. 87 161901 [10] Koblmueller G, Averbeck R, Geelhaar L, Riechert H, Hösler W and Pongratz P 2003 J. Appl. Phys. 93 9591 [11] Srikant V, Speck J S and Clarke D R 1997 J. Appl. Phys. 82 4286
|
|
Viewed |
|
|
|
Full text
|
|
|
|
|
Abstract
|
|
|
|
|