*********************************
There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
*********************************
Title: Nano-selective-area Growth of Group III-nitrides on Silicon and Traditional Substrates
Committee:
Dr. Abdallah Ougazzaden, ECE, Chair , Advisor
Dr. Shyh-Chiang Shen, ECE
Dr. Jean Paul Salvestrini, ECE
Dr. Paul Voss, ECE
Dr. Cedric Pradalier, Robotics and Intelligent Machines
Abstract:
We developed and evaluated NSAG techniques for Group III-Nitrides as a way to mitigate the various difficulties with this material system (high defect density, threading dislocations, phase separation and graining, etc.), to bring these material systems to the nanoscale, and to allow the use of inexpensive silicon substrates. To that end, we used NSAG of GaN, InGaN, AlGaN, and BGaN grown on GaN/Sapphire and AlN/Si(111) templates, and we evaluated the effectiveness of our NSAG techniques on each template by comparing our results to those obtained from planar (non-NSAG) growth. We also investigated the engineering of microtemplates by coalescing NSAG GaN structures and compared material grown on these microtemplates to material grown on normal planarly grown GaN.
Across the board, NSAG was selective and, when compared to planar growth, consistently resulted in higher quality material with fewer dislocations. NSAG of GaN on AlN/Si(111) resulted in defect-free nanopyramids, 90% of which were single crystal. By coalescing such nanostructures into a microtemplate, we produced an InGaN top layer with 7 times the optical emission intensity as InGaN grown simultaneously on non-NSAG planar GaN.
NSAG InGaN nanopyramids grown on GaN/Sapphire templates were used to make PIN-based solar cells that produced current 3 orders of magnitude greater than their planar counterparts, and which had 20 times greater IV ratios at ±1 V. We then leveraged this newly-won know-how with our previous success growing NSAG GaN on AlN/Si(111) to produce InGaN nanopyramids on AlN/Si(111) with no defect band and 50% stronger luminescence than in 2D growth. These nanopyramids were highly uniform, single-crystal, dislocation-free, and free from phase clustering effects and other nonuniformities found in planar growth. With additional effort, we achieved a maximum InN composition of 33%, with NSAG material showing four times better emission characteristics than planar material on the same substrate. Additionally, we found that mask margin affected InN composition of our nanopyramids, and that by using different mask geometries on the same template, we can create single-growth-step micropixels with InGaN nanostructures emitting between green and red, depending on the geometry of their mask.
Lastly, we achieved NSAG BGaN nanopyramids on both AlN/Si(111) and GaN/Sapphire. As expected, we found unmasked field growth of BGaN to be of a much lower quality on AlN/Si(111) than on GaN, but also found that the former benefitted much more from NSAG, owing to its low BGaN nucleation rate. As with NSAG of GaN, BGaN nanopyramids on AlN/Si(111) were single crystal to the extent that nucleation occurred once per aperture, which happened in more than 90% of the apertures. On AlN/Si(111), XRD and CL showed BN composition to be between 1.3 and 2.0%, and the nanopyramids on both substrates exhibited smooth sidewalls.
