Growth of N‐Polar Aluminum Nitride on Vicinal Sapphire Substrates and Aluminum Nitride Bulk Substrates

Abstract

Herein, nitrogen‐polar (N‐polar, (000‐1)) aluminum nitride (AlN) is grown on sapphire substrates with various misorientation angles through metal‐organic vapor phase epitaxy. Moreover, the effect of the sapphire substrates’ misorientation angle on the surface flatness and the crystal quality of N‐polar AlN is studied. The results demonstrate that the surface flatness of the AlN layer improves as the misorientation angle of the sapphire substrates increases. Further, the root mean square of the AlN layer significantly improves to a maximum of 1 nm, in the range of the misorientation angles between 2° and 4°, as compared with the misorientation angle of 0.2° of a conventional substrate. No deterioration in crystallinity is confirmed when an AlN layer is grown on an N‐polar AlN substrate under the same growth conditions as those for the sapphire substrates.