Recovery kinetics in high temperature annealed AlN heteroepitaxial films

Abstract

Based on the experimental dislocation annihilation rates, vacancy core diffusion-controlled dislocation climb was found as a dominant recovery mechanism in high temperature annealing of AlN heteroepitaxial films. Dislocation annihilation mechanisms via dislocation glide (with or without kinks) and vacancy bulk diffusion were found to be less significant. Cross-slip was also ruled out as a possible mechanism as a majority of dislocations in heteroepitaxial AlN films are threading edge dislocations. While dislocation climb through both vacancy bulk and core diffusion could offer a plausible explanation of the recovery process, the activation energy for the vacancy core diffusion-controlled dislocation climb was relatively low (4.3 ± 0.1 eV), as estimated from an Arrhenius plot. The validity of the vacancy core diffusion mechanism was also supported by a large vacancy mean free path (∼240 nm), which was comparable to the sample thickness and thus the average dislocation length. Finally, the experimentally observed dislocation density reduction as a function of the annealing temperature and time was in good agreement with the vacancy core diffusion mechanism.