Growth of a-Plane GaN Films on r-Plane Sapphire by Combining Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy with the Hydride Vapor Phase Epitaxy

Hydride vapor phase epitaxy （HVPE） is utilized to grow nonpolar a-plane GaN layers on r-plane sapphire templates prepared by metal organic vapor phase epitaxy （MOVPE）. The surface morphology and microstructures of the samples are characterized by atomic force microscopy. The full width at half maximum （FWHM） of the HVPE sample shows a W-shape and that of the MOVPE sample shows an M-shape plane with the degree of 0 in the high-resolution x-ray diffraction （HRXRD） results. The surface morphology attributes to this significant anisotropic. HRXRD reveals that there is a significant reduction in the FWHM, both on-axis and off-axis for HVPE GaN are compared with the MOVPE template. The decrease of the FWHM of E2 （high） Raman scat tering spectra further indicates the improvement of crystal quality after HVPE. By comparing the results of secondary- ion-mass spectroscope and photoluminescence spectrum of the samples grown by HVPE and MOVPE, we propose that C-involved defects are originally responsible for the yellow luminescence.

Response time improvement of AlGaN photoconductive detectors by adjusting crystal-nuclei coalescence process in metal organic vapor phase epitaxy

AlGaN photoconductive ultraviolet detectors are fabricated to study their time response characteristics. Persistent photoconductivity, a deterring factor for the detector response time, is found to be strongly related to the grain boundary density in AlGaN epilayers. By improving the crystal-nuclei coalescence process in metal organic vapor phase epitaxy, the grain-boundary density can be reduced, resulting in an-order-of-magnitude decrease in response time.

Migration characterization of Ga and In adatoms on dielectric surface in selective MOVPE

Migration characterizations of Ga and In adatoms on the dielectric surface in selective metal organic vapor phase epitaxy （MOVPE） were investigated. In the typical MOVPE environment, the selectivity of growth is preserved for GaN, and the growth rate of GaN micro-pyramids is sensitive to the period of the patterned SiO2 mask. A surface migration induced model was adopted to figure out the effective migration length of Ga adatoms on the dielectric surface. Different from the growth of GaN, the selective area growth of InGaN on the patterned template would induce the deposition of InGaN polycrystalline particles on the patterned Si02 mask with a long period. It was demonstrated with a scanning electron microscope and energy dispersive spectroscopy that the In adatoms exhibit a shorter migration length on the dielectric surface.

A MOVPE method for improving InGaN growth quality by pre-introducing TMIn

We propose a metal organic vapor phase epitaxy(MOVPE) method of pre-introducing TMIn during the growth of uGa N to improve the subsequent growth of In Ga N and discuss the impact of this method in detail. Monitoring the MOVPE by the interference curve generated by the laser incident on the film surface, we found that this method avoided the problem of the excessive In Ga N growth rate. Further x-ray diffraction(XRD), photoluminescence(PL), and atomic force microscope(AFM) tests showed that the quality of In Ga N is improved. It is inferred that by introducing TMIn in advance, the indium atom can replace the gallium atom in the reactor walls, delivery pipes, and other corners. Hence the auto-incorporation of gallium can be reduced when In Ga N is grown, so as to improve the material quality.

MOVPE Growth of In_xGa_(1-x)N(x～0.4) and Fabrication of Homo-junction Solar Cells

The metal organic vapor phase epitaxy （MOVPE） growth of indium gallium nitride （InGaN） has been discussed in detail towards the fabrication of solar cell. The InGaN film with In contents up to 0.4 are successfully grown by controlling the fundamental growth parameters such as the precursor gas flow rates, temperature etc. The formation of metallic In originates from the higher value （0.74） of trimethylindium/ （trimethylindium ＋ triethylgallium） （TMI/（TMI ＋ TEG）） molar ratio with low （4100） V/lll weight molar ratio while the lower value （0.2） of TMI/（TMI ＋ TEG） causes the phase separation. It is also necessary to control the growth rate and epitaxial film thickness to suppress the phase separation in the material. The crystalline quality of grown films is studied and it is found to be markedly deteriorated with increasing In content. The lattice parameters as well as the thermal expansion coefficient mismatch between GaN template and InGaN epi-layer are primarily considered as the reasons to deteriorate the film quality for higher In content. By using Ino.16Ga0.84N films, an n＋-p homo-junction structure is fabricated on 0.65 μm GaN template. For such a device, the response to the light illumination （AM 1.5） is observed with an open circuit voltage of 1.4 V and the short circuit current density of 0.25 mA/cm2. To improve the performance as well as increase solar photon capturing, the device is further fabricated on thick GaN template with higher In content. The In0.25Ga0.75N n＋-p junction solar cell is found better performance with an open circuit voltage of 1.5 V and the short circuit current density of 0.5 mA/cm2. This is the InGaN p-n homo-junction solar cell with the highest In content ever reported by MOVPE.