The structure of dislocations in (In,Al,Ga)N wurtzite films grown epitaxially on (0001) or (112¯2) GaN or AlN substrates

Abstract

When dislocations have to be nucleated in the film to accommodate the lattice mismatch with the substrate, the shear stress acting in the glide plane, projection of the edge component of the Burgers vector lying in the growth plane, shear stress required for the dislocation to glide, and ability to decompose into partial dislocation pairs with an associated stacking fault are considered. This is done for growth on the (0001) or (112¯2) substrates by calculating the angle the slip plane, h, makes with the growth plane, length of the Burgers vector, b, angle between b and the dislocation line, l, projection of b onto the normal to l lying in the growth plane, and planar density of h. The planar density is used as a measure of the shear stress required to move the dislocation, and it is computed by determining the interplanar spacing, d, and accounting for the atoms that lie in parallel planes, which are made possible by the fact that the wurtzite unit cell contains four atoms per lattice point. Only dislocations with pyramidal glide planes are considered for growth on the (0001) substrate because the plane strain generated by the lattice mismatch does not generate any shear stress in the basal or prismatic planes. Only one member of the family of planes is considerate for this growth plane because of its high symmetry. For growth on the (112¯2) plane both slip in the basal plane and the prismatic plane normal to the Burgers vector in it are examined.