Strain relaxation in In xGa 1− xN epitaxial films grown coherently on GaN

Abstract

The strain relaxation was investigated in In x Ga 1− x N films grown pseudomorphically on GaN buffer layer. The shift of dominant peaks originated from In 0.035Ga 0.965N films which were thinner than the critical thickness was observed with the increasing film thickness. Considering the same thermal strains in all the samples, this is attributed to the relaxation of the in-plane strains that resulted from the increased common in-plane lattice constant of coherently grown-In 0.035Ga 0.965N films with the increasing thickness.