Effect of Carrier Gas on the Surface Morphology and Mosaic Dispersion for GaN Films by Low-Pressure MOCVD

Abstract

ABSTRACTLow-pressure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) has been used to deposit unnucleated and self-nucleated GaN thin films on (00.1) sapphire substrates. For the self-nucleated films, initial layers were grown at 540°C using trimethylgallium and ammonia as elemental sources and either nitrogen or hydrogen as the carrier gas. Using these same gas phase conditions, overlayers on native (00.1) sapphire substrates or the GaN-nucleated (00.1) sapphire substrates were deposited at 1025°C. The surface morphology and mosaic dispersion of these unnucleated and self-nucleated GaN thin films have been surveyed by a combination of real space images from atomic force microscopy and reciprocal space intensity data from X-ray scattering measurements. As expected, the unnucleated GaN films show a large-grained hexagonal relief, typical of three-dimensional island growth. However, the self-nucleated films are shown to be dense mosaics of highly oriented islands, emblematic of a more two-dimensional growth.