Nanowire-Templated Lateral Epitaxilal Growth of Low-Dislocation Density Nonpolar a-Plane GaN on r-Plane Sapphire

Coalescence of a vertically aligned GaN nanowire array on r-plane sapphire, a technique called nanowire-templated lateral epitaxial growth, is used to grow low-dislocation density a-plane GaN. The resulting film is connected to the lattice-mismatched substrate by nanowires, which facilitates dramatic strain relaxation and leads to a significant reduction in defects.