4.7 Article

Quality improvement mechanism of sputtered AlN films on sapphire substrates with high-miscut-angles along different directions

Journal

CRYSTENGCOMM
Volume 23, Issue 39, Pages 6871-6878

Publisher

ROYAL SOC CHEMISTRY
DOI: 10.1039/d1ce00654a

Keywords

-

Funding

  1. Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation [4182046]
  2. National Natural Science Foundation of China [61874007, 12074028]
  3. Shandong Provincial Major Scientific and Technological Innovation Project [2019JZZY010209]
  4. Key-area research and development program of Guangdong Province [2020B010172001]
  5. Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [buctrc201802, buctrc201830]
  6. Guangxi Science and Technology Base and Talented Special project [AD20238088]
  7. talent model base, China [AE31200065]
  8. [T3120097921]
  9. [C31200992004]

Ask authors/readers for more resources

This paper combined magnetron sputtering and high-temperature annealing technology to explore the thermal annealing of high-miscut-angle AlN films along different directions, achieving significant improvement in film quality by eliminating grain boundaries through annealing. This provides important reference for preparing high-quality deep ultraviolet emission devices.
Low dislocation AlN films are the key to prepare high-quality deep ultraviolet emission devices. So, how to reduce the dislocation of the films under the conditions of low cost and high efficiency has become a challenge in the film epitaxy growth. Therefore, this paper combined the magnetron sputtering and high-temperature annealing (HTA) technology, exploring thermal annealing of high-miscut-angle AlN films along different directions. High-resolution X-ray diffraction (XRD) and an optical microscope (OM) were used to characterize the film qualities. After annealing at 1400-1650 degrees C, the quality of sputtered AlN films improved significantly. The full width at half maximum (FWHM) of (0002) and (10-12) rocking curves decreased as the miscut angles of sapphire increased. The minimum values were obtained when the sapphire substrate had 4 degrees miscut angles along from (0001) to the (11-20) direction. Raman spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), photoluminescence (PL) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) further revealed the mechanism of enhancing the film quality by annealing. The essence of annealing to improve the film quality lies in the elimination of grain boundaries.

Authors

I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.

Reviews

Primary Rating

4.7
Not enough ratings

Secondary Ratings

Novelty
-
Significance
-
Scientific rigor
-
Rate this paper

Recommended

No Data Available
No Data Available