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Nitridation Of Sapphire Substrate Using Remote Plasma Enhanced-Ultrahigh Vacuum Chemical Vapor Deposition At Low Temperature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 February 2011

Jong-Sik Paek
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
Kyoung-Kook Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
Ji-Myon Lee
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
Dong-Jun Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
Hyo-Gun Kim
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
Seong-Ju Park
Affiliation:
Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Kwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Kwangju 506-712, Korea
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Abstract

A remote plasma enhanced-ultrahigh vacuum chemical vapor deposition (RPE-UHVCVD) system equipped with a radio frequency-inductively coupled plasma (RF-ICP) which produces the reactive nitrogen species was employed to study the nitridation process at low temperature. The sapphire surface nitridated under various conditions was investigated with x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). The nitridation process seems to be mostly affected by the RF power even at low temperature since the intensity of the N1s, peak was not dependent on the substrate temperature but on the RF power. The AFM images showed that the protrusion density on the sapphire surface decreased rapidly when the nitridation temperature was decreased. This result suggests that the formation of the protrusions is closely related to the process temperature, indicating that the formation of such protrusions is caused by the change of an elastic strain energy due to the thermal stress. It was possible to nitridate the sapphire surface without protrusion at a very low temperature. The crystallinity of GaN grown at 450 °C was found to be much improved when the sapphire substrate was nitridated at low temperature prior to the GaN layer growth.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Materials Research Society 1998

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