Published online by Cambridge University Press: 17 March 2011
Defects and stress are the most serious issues for growth of AlGaN. Low-temperature deposited (LT -) AlN interlayer between AlGaN and GaN is found to reduce tensile stress during growth, and at the same time suppress the propagation of dislocations having screw components, by which UV-photodetector showing very-low-dark current has been successfully fabricated. However, additional pure-edge dislocations are generated at the LT -interlayer, which resulted in the poor emission property. In addition to the LT -interlayer, lateral growth at the trenched structure was used, thereby achieving crack-free AlGaN and reduction of the density of all types of dislocations in the AlGaN layer. UV light emitting diodes having AlGaN/GaN multi-quantum well active layer was fabricated on the low dislocation density AlGaN. The LED shows strong and sharp UV-emission from GaN-wells.