This work has investigated the microstructure characteristics of high-quality alpha-Ga2O3 thin film grown on the Al2O3 single crystal substrate membrane. Hetero-epitaxial alpha Ga2O3 crystals reveal the formation of a three-fold symmetry at the initial stage of the growth by the oxygen template provided by the Al2O3. Inversion domains are found, and they have a 180° inverted configuration from the surroundings. These IDs lead to extra diffraction spots when observed along [110] and [010].

This work investigates the relationship between atomic arrangement and luminescence properties in a high-quality alpha-Ga2O3 thin film grown on an Al2O3 single-crystal membrane. The strain induced by merging domain boundaries shows more significant variability in annular darkfield images even though there is no additional gallium concentration confirmed. The bandgap energy of alpha-Ga2O3 is estimated to be 5.56 eV from the CL measurement in a transmission electron microscope. A peak at 320 nm was observed within the domain, while the domain boundary showed spectrum peaks with 380–480 nm. The anti-phase domain (APD) is formed by the instabilities of Al–O bonding templates provided by the Al2O3 substrate. The APD boundary gives a characteristic wavelength of 350 nm, which is the result of the merging boundary of in-phase and anti-phase domains.

Surface undulation was formed while growing InGaN/GaN multi-quantum wells on a semi-polar m-plane (1–100) sapphire substrate. Two distinct facets, parallel to 112¯2 and 011¯1, were formed in the embedded multi-quantum wells (MQWs). The structural and luminescence characteristics of the two facets were investigated using transmission electron microscopy equipped with cathodoluminescence. Those well-defined quantum wells, parallel and slanted to the growth plane, showed distinct differences in indium incorporation from both the X-ray yield and the contrast difference in annular darkfield images. Quantitative measurements of concentration in 011¯1 MQWs show an approximately 4 at% higher indium incorporation compared to the corresponding 112¯2 when the MQWs were formed under the same growth condition.