Articles you may be interested inSmall valence-band offset of In 0.17 Al 0.83 N / GaN heterostructure grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy Appl. Phys. Lett. 96, 132104 (2010); 10.1063/1.3368689 Band discontinuity in the GaAs/AlAs interface studied by in situ photoemission spectroscopy AlN and GaN epitaxial heterojunctions on 6H-SiC(0001): Valence band offsets and polarization fieldsDependence of (0001) GaN/AlN valence band discontinuity on growth temperature and surface reconstructionTo advance the development of III-V nitride on silicon heterostructure semiconductor devices, we have utilized in-situ x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) to investigate the chemistry and valence band offset (VBO) at interfaces formed by gas source molecular beam epitaxy of AlN on Si (001) and (111) substrates. For the range of growth temperatures (600-1050 C) and Al pre-exposures (1-15 min) explored, XPS showed the formation of Si-N bonding at the AlN/Si interface in all cases. The AlN/Si VBO was determined to be À3.5 6 0.3 eV and independent of the Si orientation and degree of interfacial Si-N bond formation. The corresponding AlN/Si conduction band offset (CBO) was calculated to be 1.6 6 0.3 eV based on the measured VBO and band gap for wurtzite AlN. Utilizing these results, prior reports for the GaN/AlN band alignment, and transitive and commutative rules for VBOs, the VBO and CBO at the GaN/Si interface were determined to be À2.7 6 0.3 and À0.4 6 0.3 eV, respectively. V C 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.