Investigation of GaN Films Grown on Liquid-Phase Deposited SiO2 Nanopatterned Sapphire Substrates

Abstract

A simple, easy and relatively inexpensive liquid phase deposition (LPD) method was used to introduce nano SiO2 on sapphire substrates to fabricate nanoscale patterned sapphire substrates (PSS). Two kinds of nanoscale PSS were used to grow GaN, namely "NPOS" which is nano-pattern oxide on sapphire substrate and "NPSS" which is nano-patterned sapphire substrate. It was found that upper region of NPSS-GaN had the best quality. This is because as the growth time increased, laterally-grown GaN caused the threading dislocations to bend toward the patterns. Besides, voids formed on the NPSS pattern sidewalls caused more threading dislocation bending toward these voids. (C) 2012 The Electrochemical Society. All rights reserved.