TY - JOUR
T1 - Structural properties, crystal quality and growth modes of MOCVD-grown AlN with TMAl pretreatment of sapphire substrate
AU - Sun, Haiding
AU - Wu, Feng
AU - Altahtamouni, Talal Mohammed Ahmad
AU - Alfaraj, Nasir
AU - Li, Kun
AU - Detchprohm, Theeradetch
AU - Dupuis, Russell D.
AU - Li, Xiaohang
N1 - KAUST Repository Item: Exported on 2020-10-01
Acknowledgements: The KAUST authors would like to acknowledge the support of GCC Research Program REP/1/3189-01-01, Baseline BAS/1/1664-01-01, and Equipment BAS/1/1664-01-07. The work at QU was supported by GCC Research Program GCC-2017-007. The work at Georgia Institute of Technology was supported in part by DARPA under grant W911NF-15-1-0026 and NSF under grant DMR-1410874. RDD acknowledges the additional support of the Steve W. Chaddick Endowed Chair in Electro-Optics and Georgia Research Alliance.
PY - 2017/9/7
Y1 - 2017/9/7
N2 - The growth of high quality AlN epitaxial films relies on precise control of the initial growth stages. In this work, we examined the influence of the trimethylaluminum (TMAl) pretreatment of sapphire substrates on the structural properties, crystal quality and growth modes of heteroepitaxial AlN films on (0001) sapphire substrates. Without the pretreatment, the AlN films nucleated on the smooth surface but exhibited mixed crystallographic Al- (N-) polarity, resulting in rough AlN film surfaces. With increasing the pretreatment time from 1 to 5 s, the N-polarity started to be impeded. However, small islands were formed on sapphire surface due to the decompostion of TMAl. As a result, small voids became noticeable at the nucleation layer (NL) because the growth started as quasi three-dimensional (3D) but transformed to 2D mode as the film grew thicker and got coalesced, leading to smoother and Al-polar films. On the other hand, longer pretreatment time of 40 s formed large 3D islands on sapphire, and thus initiated a 3D-growth mode of the AlN film, generating Al-polar AlN nanocolumns with different facets, which resulted into rougher film surfaces. The epitaxial growth modes and their correlation with the AlN film crystal quality under different TMAl pretreatments are also discussed.
AB - The growth of high quality AlN epitaxial films relies on precise control of the initial growth stages. In this work, we examined the influence of the trimethylaluminum (TMAl) pretreatment of sapphire substrates on the structural properties, crystal quality and growth modes of heteroepitaxial AlN films on (0001) sapphire substrates. Without the pretreatment, the AlN films nucleated on the smooth surface but exhibited mixed crystallographic Al- (N-) polarity, resulting in rough AlN film surfaces. With increasing the pretreatment time from 1 to 5 s, the N-polarity started to be impeded. However, small islands were formed on sapphire surface due to the decompostion of TMAl. As a result, small voids became noticeable at the nucleation layer (NL) because the growth started as quasi three-dimensional (3D) but transformed to 2D mode as the film grew thicker and got coalesced, leading to smoother and Al-polar films. On the other hand, longer pretreatment time of 40 s formed large 3D islands on sapphire, and thus initiated a 3D-growth mode of the AlN film, generating Al-polar AlN nanocolumns with different facets, which resulted into rougher film surfaces. The epitaxial growth modes and their correlation with the AlN film crystal quality under different TMAl pretreatments are also discussed.
UR - http://hdl.handle.net/10754/625347
UR - http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1361-6463/aa8503
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85029544112&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1361-6463/aa8503
DO - 10.1088/1361-6463/aa8503
M3 - Article
SN - 0022-3727
VL - 50
SP - 395101
JO - Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
JF - Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics
IS - 39
ER -