Investigation of the Polarity in GaN Grown by HVPE

The crystals of group-Ⅲ nitride semiconductors with wurtzite structure exhibit a strong polarity. Especially, GaN has characteristics of different growth rate, anisotropic electrical and optical properties due to the polarity. In this work, GaN epilayer was grown and the polarities of the crystals were observed by the chemical wet etching and SP-EFM. GaN thin films were deposited on c-plane A1₂O₃ substrate under the variations of growth conditions by HVPE such as the deposition temperature of the buffer layer, the deposition time, the ratio of Group-V and Ⅲ and the deposition temperature of the film. The adquate results were obtained under the conditions of 500℃, 90 seconds, 1333 and 1080℃, respectively. It is observed that the GaN layer grown without the buffer layer has N-polarity and the GaN layer grown on the buffer layer has Ga-polarity. Fine crystal single particles were grown on c-plane A1₂O₃ and SiO₂, layer. The external shape of the crystal shows ｛10-11｝｛10-10｝(000-1) planes as expected in the PBC theory and anisotropic behavior along c-axis is obvious. As a result of etching on each plane, (000-1) and ｛10-11｝planes were etched strongly due to the N-polarity and ｛10-10｝ plane was not affected due to the non-polarity. In the case of the crystal grown on c-plane A1₂O₃, two types of crystals were grown. They were hexagonal pyramidal-shape with ｛10-11｝plane and hexagonal prism with basal plane. The latter might be grown by twin plane reentrant edge (TPRE) growth.

HVPE법으로 성장시킨 GaN의 극성 분석