Impact of varying buffer thickness generated strain and threading dislocations on the formation of plasma assisted MBE grown ultra-thin AlGaN/GaN heterostructure on silicon

Abstract

Plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (PAMBE) growth of ultra-thin Al0.2Ga0.8N/GaN heterostructures on Si(111) substrate with three buffer thickness (600 nm/400 nm/200 nm) have been reported. An unique growth process has been developed that supports lower temperature epitaxy of GaN buffer which minimizes thermally generated tensile strain through appropriate nitridation and AlN initiated epitaxy for achieving high quality GaN buffer which supports such ultra-thin heterostructures in the range of 10-15Å. It is followed by investigations of role of buffer thickness on formation of ultra-thin Al0.2Ga0.8N/GaN heterostructure, in terms of stress-strain and threading dislocation (TD). Structural characterization were performed by High-Resolution X-Ray Diffraction (HRXRD), room-temperature Photoluminescence (RT-PL), High Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy (HRTEM) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). Analysis revealed increasing biaxial tensile stress of 0.6918 ± 0.04, 1.1084, 1.1814 GPa in heterostructures with decreasing buffer thickness of 600, 400, 200 nm respectively which are summed up with residual tensile strain causing red-shift in RT-PL peak. Also, increasing buffer thickness drastically reduced TD density from the order 1010 cm−2 to 108 cm−2. Surface morphology through AFM leads to decrease of pits and root mean square value with increasing buffer thickness which are resulted due to reduction of combined effect of strain and TDs.

Improved Performance of GaN-Based Light-Emitting Diodes Grown on Si (111) Substrates with NH3 Growth Interruption

“…The E 2 (high) phonon peak of sample C was blue-shifted by 1.15 cm −1 from that of the reference sample, corresponding to the impressive different relaxation of tensile stress ( σ xx ) (0.274 GPa). The relaxation of tensile strain in GaN layer for sample C causes the shrinking the lattice constant, which shifts the PL peak position to higher energy [ 29 ]. The reduced tensile stress in sample C arises predominantly from the coalescence of large-sized grains due to the NH 3 growth interruption method [ 30 , 31 ].…”