Direct growth of GaN on off‐oriented SiC (0001) by molecular‐beam epitaxy for GaN/SiC heterojunction bipolar transistor

Abstract

Direct growth of GaN on misoriented 4H- and 6H-SiC (0001) Si-face substrates and electrical characteristics of n-GaN/p-SiC heterojunction mesa diodes are presented. GaN was grown by molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) using elemental Ga and rf plasma-excited active nitrogen. SiC substrates misoriented 8° toward the [11-20] direction were used in this study. The surfaces of MBE-grown GaN layers have wavy features with peak-to-valley height of 30 nm. These features originated from the substrate misorientation. It was found that step bunching and large faceting along [01-10] and [10-10] directions occurred during the growth of GaN. Lowering the growth temperature suppresses large faceting, and results in reduction of the peak-to-valley height to 3 nm. However, the surface still has the same undulating features (on a smaller length scale). Mesa diodes were fabricated from the grown GaN layers. The correlation between the diode electrical characteristics and GaN growth conditions is discussed. (© 2005 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)