Void formation and failure in InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructures

Condensed clusters of point defects within an InGaN/AlGaN double heterostructure grown by metal-organic vapor phase epitaxy on sapphire substrate have been observed using transmission electron microscopy. The existence of voids results in failure of the heterostructure in electroluminescence. The voids are 50-100 nm in diameter and are distributed inhomogeneously within In0.25Ga0.75N/AlGaN active layers. The density of the voids was measured as 10(15) cm(-3), which corresponds to a density of dangling bonds of 10(20) cm(-3). These dangling bonds may fully deplete free carriers in this double heterostructure and result in the heterostructure having high resistivity as confirmed by electrical measurement. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Localized exciton dynamics in AlInGaN alloy

Carrier recombination dynamics in AlInGaN alloy has been studied by photoluminescence (PL) and time-resolved PL (TRPL) at various temperatures. The fast red-shift of PL peak energy is observed and well fitted by a physical model considering the thermal activation and transfer processes. This result provides evidence for the exciton localization in the quantum dot (QD)-like potentials in our AlInGaN alloy. The TRPL signals are found to be described by a stretched exponential function of exp[(-t/,tau)13], indicating the presence of a significant disorder in the material. The disorder is attributed to a randomly distributed QDs or clusters caused by indium fluctuations. By studying the dependence of the dispersive exponent beta on temperature and emission energy, we suggest that the exciton hopping dominate the diffusion of carriers localized in the disordered QDs. Furthermore, the localized states are found to have 0D density of states up to 250 K, since the radiative lifetime remains almost unchanged with increasing temperature. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Design of high brightness cubic-GaN LEDs grown on GaAs substrate

The Principle of optical thin film was used to calculate the feasibility of improving the light extraction efficiency of GaN/GaAs optical devices by wafer-bonding technique. The calculated results show that the light extraction efficiency of bonded samples can be improved by 2.66 times than the as-grown GaN/GaAs samples when a thin Ni layer was used as adhesive layer and Ag layer as reflective layer. Full reflectance spectrum comparison shows that reflectivity for the incident light of 459.2 nm of the bonded samples was improved by 2.4 times than the as-grown samples, which is consistent with the calculated results.

The growth morphologies of GaN layer on Si(111) substrate

The growth morphologies of metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) grown GaN layer on Si(111) substrate were studied using atomic force microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. It was found that the growth process of GaN/Si(111) consisted of two cycles of island growth and coalescence. These two cycles process differs markedly from that of one cycle process reported. The stress of evolving GaN layers on Si(111) was characterized by measuring the lattice constant c of GaN using X-ray diffraction (XRD) technique. It was proposed that the large tensile stress within the film during growth initiated this second island growth cycle, and the interaction between the GaN islands with high orientational fluctuation on the buffer layer induced this large tensile growth stress when coalescence occurred. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Structural characteristic of cubic GaN nucleation layers on GaAs(001) substrates by MOCVD

The structural characteristic of cubic GaN (C-GaN) nucleation layers on GaAs(0 0 1) substrates by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition was in detail investigated first by X-ray diffraction (XRD) measurements, using a Huber five-circle diffractometer and an intense synchrotron X-ray source. The XRD results indicate that the C-GaN nucleation layers are highly crystallized. Phi scans and pole figures of the (1 1 1) reflections give a convincing proof that the GaN nucleation layers show exactly cubic symmetrical structure. The GaN(1 1 1) reflections at 54.74degrees in chi are a measurable component, however (002) components parallel to the substrate surface are not detected. Possible explanations are suggested. The pole figures of {1 0 (1) over bar 0} reflections from H-GaN inclusions show that the parasitic H-GaN originates from the C-GaN nucleation layers. The coherence lengths along the close-packed [1 1 1] directions estimated from the (1 1 1) peaks are nanometer order of magnitude. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Investigation on the origin of crystallographic tilt in lateral epitaxial overgrown GaN using selective etching

The crystallographic tilt of the lateral epitaxial overgrown (LEO) GaN on sapphire Substrate with SiNx mask is investiaated by double crystal X-ray diffraction. Two wing peaks beside the GaN 0002 peak can be observed for the as-grown LEO GaN. During the selective etching of SiNx mask, each wing peak splits into two peaks, one of which disappears as the mask is removed, while the other remains unchanged. This indicates that the crystallographic tilt of the overgrown region is caused not only by the plastic deformation resulted from the bending of threading dislocations, but by the non-uniformity elastic deformation related with the GaN, SiNx interfacial forces. The widths of these two peaks are also studied in this paper. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Wafer bonding technique used for the integration of cubic GaN/GaAs (001) with Si substrate

We successfully used the metal mediated-wafer bonding technique in transferring the as-grown cubic GaN LED structure of Si substrate. The absorbing GaAs substrate was removed by using the chemical solutions of NH4OH : H2O2=1 : 10. SEM and PL results show that wafer bonding technique could transfer the cubic GaN epilayers uniformly to Si without affecting the physical and optical properties of epilayers. XRD result shows that there appeared new peaks related to AgGa2 and Ni4N diffraction, indicating that the metals used as adhesive and protective layers interacted with the p-GaN layer during the long annealing process. It is just the reaction that ensures the reliability of the integration of GaN with metal and minor contact resistance on the interface.

ECR plasma in growth of cubic GaN by low pressure MOCVD

To heteroepitaxally grow the crystalline cubic-GaN (c-GaN) film on the substrates with large lattice mismatch is basically important for fabricating the blue or ultraviolet laser diodes based on cubic group III nitride materials. We have obtained the crystalline c-GaN film and the heteroepitaxial interface between c-Gan and GaAs (001) substrate by the ECR Plasma-Assisted Metal Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition (PA-MOCVD) under low-pressure and low-temperature (similar to600degreesC) on a homemade ECR-plasma Semiconductor Processing Device (ESPD). In order to decrease the growth temperature, the ECR plasma source was adopted as the activated nitrogen source, therefore the working pressure of MOCVD was decreased down to the region less than 1 Pa. To eliminate the damages from energetic ions of current plasma source, a Multi-cusp cavity,coupling ECR Plasma source (MEP) was selected to use in our experiment. To decrease the strain and dislocations induced from the large lattice mismatch between c-GaN and GaAs substrate, the plasma pretreatment procedure i.e., the initial growth technique was investigated The experiment arrangements, the characteristics of plasma and the growth procedure, the characteristics on-GaN film and interface between c-GaN and GaAs(001), and the roles of ECR plasma are described in this contribution.

Residual donors and compensation in metalorganic chemical vapor deposition as-grown n-GaN

In our recent report, [Xu , Appl. Phys. Lett. 76, 152 (2000)], profile distributions of five elements in the GaN/sapphire system have been obtained using secondary ion-mass spectroscopy. The results suggested that a thin degenerate n(+) layer at the interface is the main source of the n-type conductivity for the whole film. The further studies in this article show that this n(+) conductivity is not only from the contribution of nitride-site oxygen (O-N), but also from the gallium-site silicon (Si-Ga) donors, with activation energies 2 meV (for O-N) and 42 meV (for Si-Ga), respectively. On the other hand, Al incorporated on the Ga sublattice reduces the concentration of compensating Ga-vacancy acceptors. The two-donor two-layer conduction, including Hall carrier concentration and mobility, has been modeled by separating the GaN film into a thin interface layer and a main bulk layer of the GaN film. The bulk layer conductivity is to be found mainly from a near-surface thin layer and is temperature dependent. Si-Ga and O-N should also be shallow donors and V-Ga-O or V-Ga-Al should be compensation sites in the bulk layer. The best fits for the Hall mobility and the Hall concentration in the bulk layer were obtained by taking the acceptor concentration N-A=1.8x10(17) cm(-3), the second donor concentration N-D2=1.0x10(18) cm(-3), and the compensation ratio C=N-A/N-D1=0.6, which is consistent with Rode's theory. Saturation of carriers and the low value of carrier mobility at low temperature can also be well explained. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.

Investigation on the origin of wurtzite domains in thick cubic GaN using reactive ion etching

We measured the depth profiling of photoluminescence (PL) in cubic GaN films. The depth-resolved PL of normal grown GaN layers showed that the near-band-edge luminescence intensities of both cubic and wurtzite domains remained constant only until an etching depth of up to 2.7 mu m, but their ratio remained unchanged at all etching depths. Moreover, when a thin In0.1Ga0.9N layer was sandwiched between two GaN layers, the content of the wurtzite domains increased, and its distribution showed a dependence on thickness. As the reactive ion etching depth increased, the PL intensity ratio of cubic GaN to wurtzite domains increased. Based on the distribution, the strain relaxation, instead of the instability of cubic GaN at high temperature, was attributed to the origin of wurtzite domains. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science S.A. All rights reserved.

Ultraviolet-blue electroluminescence from Gd3Ga5O12 : Ag

UV-blue light was obtained from a thin-film electroluminescence device using Gd3Ga5O12:Ag as a light-emitting layer, which was deposited by using electron-beam evaporation. The crystal composition and structure of Gd3Ga5O12:Ag were studied by x-ray powder diffraction, The Gd3Ga5O12:Ag has a photoluminescence emission which peaked at around 397 and 467 nm, which were attributed to the oxide vacancies and Ag+, respectively. The brightness of 32 cd/m(2) was obtained when an alternating voltage of 130 V at 1 kHz was applied. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)05031-2].

Studies of high DC current induced degradation in III-V nitride based heterojunctions

We report experiments on high de current stressing in commercial III-V nitride based heterojunction light-emitting diodes. Stressing currents ranging from 100 mA to 200 mA were used. Degradations in the device properties were investigated through detailed studies of the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics, electroluminescence, deep-level transient Fourier spectroscopy and flicker noise. Our experimental data demonstrated significant distortions in the I-V characteristics subsequent to electrical stressing. The room temperature electro-luminescence of the devices exhibited a 25% decrement in the peak emission intensity. Concentration of the deep-levels was examined by deep-level transient Fourier spectroscopy, which indicated an increase in the density of deep-traps from 2.7 x 10(13) cm(-3) to 4.2 x 10(13) cm(-3) at E-1 = E-C - 1.1 eV. The result is consistent with our study of 1/f noise, which exhibited up to three orders of magnitude increase in the voltage noise power spectra. These traps are typically located at energy levels beyond the range that can be characterized by conventional techniques including DLTS. The two experiments, therefore, provide a more complete picture of trap generation due to high dc current stressing.

Blue-violet photoluminescence from large-scale highly aligned boron carbonitride nanofibers

We report on the strong blue-violet photoluminescence (PL) at room temperature from the large-scale highly aligned boron carbonitride (BCN) nanofibers synthesized by bias-assisted hot filament chemical vapor deposition. The photoluminescence peak wavelength shifts in the range of 470-390 nm by changing the chemical composition of the BCN nanofibers, which shows an interesting blue and violet-light-emitting material with adjustable optical properties. The mechanism for the shift of the PL peaks at room temperature is also discussed. (C) 2000 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(00)04427-2].

Effect of Si doping on cubic GaN films grown on GaAs(100)

Epitaxial layers of cubic GaN have been grown by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (MOVPE) with Si-doping carrier concentration ranging from 3 x 10(18) to 2.4 x 10(20)/cm(3). Si-doping decreased the yellow emission of GaN. However, the heavily doped n-type material has been found to induce phase transformation. As the Si-doping concentration increases, the hexagonal GaN nanoparticles increase. Judged from the linewidth of X-ray rocking curve, Si-doping increases the density of dislocations and stacking faults. Based on these observations, a model is proposed to interpret the phase transformation induced by the generated microdefects, such as dislocations and precipitates, and induced stacking faults under heavy Si-doping. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.

Ge related defect energy and microcavity effect in GaN epitaxial layer

Using solid-phase regrowth technique, Pd/Ge contact has been made on the GaN layer, and very good ohmic behavior was observed for the contact. The Photoluminescence (PL) spectra for different structures formed by the Pd/Ge contact, GaN layer, sapphire substrate, and mirror were studied, and a defect-assisted transition was found at 450 nm related to Ge impurity. The results show that the microcavity effect strongly influences the PL spectra of the band-gap and defect-assisted transitions.