We report the interplay between In incorporation and strain relaxation kinetics in high-In-content In x Ga 1-x N (x ¼ 0.3) layers grown by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. For In mole fractions x ¼ 0.13-0.48, best structural and morphological qualities are obtained under In excess conditions, at In accumulation limit, and at a growth temperature where InGaN decomposition is active. Under such conditions, in situ and ex situ analyses of the evolution of the crystalline structure with the layer thickness point to an onset of misfit relaxation after the growth of 40 nm, and a gradual relaxation during more than 200 nm, which results in an inhomogeneous strain distribution along the growth axis. This process is associated with a compositional pulling effect, i.e., indium incorporation is partially inhibited in presence of compressive strain, resulting in a compositional gradient with increasing In mole fraction towards the surface. V C 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.

The structural, morphological, electrical and optical properties of In-rich AlxIn1−xN (0  <  x  <  0.39) layers grown by reactive radio-frequency (RF) sputtering on sapphire are investigated as a function of the deposition parameters. The RF power applied to the aluminum target (0 W–150 W) and substrate temperature (300 °C–550 °C) are varied. X-ray diffraction measurements reveal that all samples have a wurtzite crystallographic structure oriented with the c-axis along the growth direction. The aluminum composition is tuned by changing the power applied to the aluminum target while keeping the power applied to the indium target fixed at 40 W. When increasing the Al content from 0 to 0.39, the room-temperature optical band gap is observed to blue-shift from 1.76 eV to 2.0  eV, strongly influenced by the Burstein–Moss effect. Increasing the substrate temperature, results in an evolution of the morphology from closely-packed columnar to compact. For a substrate temperature of 500 °C and RF power for Al of 150 W, compact Al0.39In0.61N films with a smooth surface (root-mean-square surface roughness below 1 nm) are produced.