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Investigation of MOCVD grown crack-free 4 μm thick aluminum nitride using nitrogen as a carrier gas

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A Correction to this article was published on 12 August 2021

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Abstract

We report the growth of crack-free 4 μm thick Aluminum Nitride (AlN) layers in a custom build vertical cold wall metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) reactor using N2 carrier gas on 0.2° offcut sapphire substrate without any additional substrate preprocessing steps. The growth process includes a low-temperature pulsed rough buffer layer followed by a high-temperature layer with continuous growth without any interlayer. The structural properties of the AlN were analyzed using atomic force microscopy (AFM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and Raman spectroscopy. The AFM image of the 4 µm AlN layer shows an atomically smooth 2-dimensional surface with terrace-like steps. The dislocation density of 1 × 109 cm−2 was calculated using Williamson and Hall process for a 4 µm AlN sample. Additionally, strain calculation from XRD and stress calculation from Raman spectroscopy of AlN grown with N2 carrier gas are discussed.

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Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the University of South Carolina through the ASPIRE 1 program.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC, 29208, USA

    Samiul Hasan, Abdullah Mamun, Kamal Hussain, Dhruvinkumar Patel, Mikhail Gaevski, Iftikhar Ahmad & Asif Khan

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  1. Samiul Hasan
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  2. Abdullah Mamun
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  3. Kamal Hussain
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  5. Mikhail Gaevski
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Correspondence to Samiul Hasan or Iftikhar Ahmad.

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Hasan, S., Mamun, A., Hussain, K. et al. Investigation of MOCVD grown crack-free 4 μm thick aluminum nitride using nitrogen as a carrier gas. MRS Advances 6, 456–460 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1557/s43580-021-00071-8

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