Influences of group-III source preflow on the polarity, optical, and structural properties of GaN grown on nitridated sapphire substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

We report the influences of group-III source preflow, which were introduced prior to the growth of the low temperature GaN on the polarity, photoluminescence (PL), and crystallographic properties of GaN epilayers grown on nitridated c-plane sapphire substrates by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition. By studying the surface morphology evolutions under chemical etching in KOH, we found that with increasing the trimethyl-gallium (TMGa) preflow duration (t), the polarity of the GaN film can be changed from a complete N-polarity to a mixture of N- and Ga-polarity and further to a complete Ga-polarity. PL and high-resolution X-ray diffraction studies revealed that the impurity incorporation and the edge- and screw-type threading dislocations are strongly polarity dependent. A further study at the optimized t (i.e., 30 s for TMGa) shows that the polarity inversion of GaN can be realized not only by TMGa preflow but also by trimethyl-aluminium preflow and by trimethyl-indium preflow. A two-monolayer model was employed to explain the polarity inversion mechanism.