The Influence of Nitrogen Ion Energy on the Quality of GaN Films Grown with Molecular Beam Epitaxy

TitleThe Influence of Nitrogen Ion Energy on the Quality of GaN Films Grown with Molecular Beam Epitaxy
Publication TypeJournal Article
Year of Publication1995
AuthorsT.C. Fu, Nathan Newman, Erin C Jones, James S Chan, Xiaohong Liu, Michael D Rubin, Nathan W Cheung, Eicke R Weber
JournalJournal of Electronic Materials
Volume24
249
Issue4
Pagination249-255
Date Published04/1995
ISSN0361-5235
KeywordsActivated nitrogen, GaN, molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), nitrogen ion energy
Abstract

Since the growth of GaN using molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) occurs under metastable growth conditions, activated nitrogen is required to drive the forward synthesis reaction. In the process of exciting the nitrogen using a plasma or ion-beam source, species with large kinetic energies are generated. Impingement on the growth surface by these species can result in subsurface damage to the growing film, as well as an enhancement of the reverse decomposition reaction rate. In this study, we investigate the effect of the kinetic energy of the impinging nitrogen ions during growth on the resulting optical and structural properties of GaN films. Strong band-edge photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence are found when a kinetic energy of ~10 eV are used, while luminescence is not detectable when the kinetic energies exceeds 18 eV. Also, we find that the use of conductive SiC substrates results in more homogeneous luminescence than the use of insulating sapphire substrates. This is attributed to sample surface charging in the case of sapphire substrates and subsequent variation in the incident ion flux and kinetic energy across the growth surface.This study clearly shows that the quality of GaN films grown by MBE are presently limited by damage from the impingement of high energy species on the growth surface.

DOI10.1007/BF02659683
LBNL Report Number

LBL-37223