Study of wing tilt in asymmetrically and laterally overgrowth of thick GaN films

Abstract

The evolution of wing tilt in laterally and epitaxially overgrown (LEO) GaN thick film was studied using cross-sectional transmission electron microscope (TEM) observation and high-resolution X-ray diffraction (XRD). The LEO GaN film was grown by hydride vapor epitaxy (HVPE) on Si(1 1 1) substrate. Horizontally propagating dislocations (HDs) and low density of threading dislocation (TD) in LEO wings were observed in TEM micrographs. Tilt of LEO wing to the GaN seed region was measured as 3.3° at interface of HVPE–GaN/metal organic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE)–GaN by selective area electron diffraction, which is much more than that in the surface region estimated as 0.4° by XRD measurements. With φ-scan XRD technique, we found that there exist many differences of tilts and twists of c-axis between the opposite wings on each mask. Asymmetry growth of the opposite wings on SiO 2 mask may be due to the flow asymmetry of precursor in vertical reactor. The tilting generation and diminishing increasing with film thickness was discussed too.