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The effect of film thickness on the strain and structural properties of thin epitaxial AlN films has been investigated by high resolution x-ray diffraction techniques and transmission electron microscopy. As a result a sublayer model of the degree of strain and related defects for all films is proposed. A sublayer with low defect density and a strain gradient is found to be present in all films and it reaches a maximum thickness of 65 nm. The films are compressively strained and the strain relaxation after a thickness of 65 nm is shown to be accompanied by misfit dislocation generation and increase of the mosaic tilt. The vibrational properties of the films have been studied by generalized infrared spectroscopic ellipsometry. The proposed sublayer model has been successfully applied to the analysis of the ellipsometry data through model calculations of the infrared dielectric function which confirm the sublayer model. It is found that the strain gradient results in a gradient of the phonon mode frequencies and broadening parameter. The initial strain relaxation in the films leads to narrowing of the observable infrared modes, while further strain relaxation broadens the modes when substantial defect generation occurs.

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Thick hydride vapor phase epitaxy GaN layers have been grown on a-plane sapphire using high-temperature ion-assisted reactively sputtered AlN as a buffer layer. Transmission electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy were carried out to study the formation of the two interfaces sapphire/AlN and AlN/GaN, and their influence on the microstructure of both the buffer layer and the main GaN layer. It was demonstrated that the high-temperature reactively sputtered buffer layer provides a good alternative for hydride vapor phase epitaxy growth of GaN layers. In particular, the buffer promotes a specific interface ordering mechanism different from that observed on low-temperature buffers.

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