Critical thickness for the formation of misfit dislocations originating from prismatic slip in semipolar and nonpolar III-nitride heterostructures

A. M. Smirnov, E. C. Young, V. E. Bougrov, J. S. Speck, A. E. Romanov

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16 Scopus citations

Abstract

We calculate the critical thickness for misfit dislocation (MD) formation in lattice mismatched semipolar and nonpolar III-nitride wurtzite semiconductor layers for the case of MDs originated from prismatic slip (PSMDs). It has been shown that there is a switch of stress relaxation modes from generation of basal slip originated MDs to PSMDs after the angle between c-axis in wurtzite crystal structure and the direction of semipolar growth reaches a particular value, e.g., ∼70° for Al0.13Ga0.87N/GaN (h0h̄ 1) semipolar heterostructures. This means that for some semipolar growth orientations of III-nitride heterostructures biaxial relaxation of misfit stress can be realized. The results of modeling are compared to experimental data on the onset of plastic relaxation in AlxGa1−xN/GaN heterostructures.
Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)016105
JournalAPL Materials
Volume4
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - Jan 20 2016
Externally publishedYes

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