In situ observation of two-step growth of AlN on sapphire using high-temperature metal–organic chemical vapour deposition

Abstract

We studied the two-step growth of AlN using high-temperature (HT) metal–organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) using a 405 nm short-wavelength in situ monitoring system. First, an AlN nucleation layer (NL) was grown on sapphire at 950 °C before deposition of the HT-AlN film at 1300 °C. The 405 nm wavelength in situ reflectance-transient curves revealed the evolution of AlN growth. The reflectance intensity of the 405 nm signal first decreased during AlN growth and then became stronger until it reached a steady state at large and equal amplitude, revealing that the AlN growth underwent a transition from nuclei to nuclei decomposed island recovery to quasi-layer-by-layer growth. The effect of different initial growth conditions on the AlN growth mode was also studied using the in situ monitoring system. The growth mechanism for the films was proposed based on the 405 nm in situ reflectance curves and atomic force microscopy observations. By optimizing the NL growth conditions, we obtained a high-quality AlN/sapphire template with full width at half maxima for the (0002) and (10−12) planes of 60 arcsec and 550 arcsec, respectively. Finally, a high performance PIN-AlGaN detector was fabricated on the AlN template, which further demonstrated its high quality.