Epitaxial growth and optical properties of Al- and N-polar AlN films by laser molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

Epitaxial aluminum nitride (AlN) films with c-axis orientation were grown on both (1 1 1) MgO and c-sapphire substrates by laser molecular beam epitaxy. The in-plane epitaxial relationships were determined to be [1 1 0]AlN‖[0 1]MgO and [1 0 0]AlN‖[1 1 0]sapphire, and the lattice mismatch was 4.2% and 13.2% for AlN films on MgO and sapphire, respectively. The AlN films were shown to be Al- and N-polar on MgO and sapphire, respectively. The former is assumed to be caused by the centre of inversion symmetry of (1 1 1) MgO substrate, while the latter is due to the O polarity of sapphire. The full-width at half-maximum of the ω-scanning spectrum for AlN film on (1 1 1) MgO substrate is smaller than that on the c-sapphire substrate. The optical band-gap energies for AlN films grown on MgO and sapphire were found to be 5.93 and 5.84 eV, close to the standard band gap of 6.2 eV, and the calculated Urbach energies were 0.27 eV and 0.53 eV, respectively. These results indicate a lower amorphous content and/or less defects/impurities in Al-polar than N-polar AlN.