Multi-stage pulsed laser deposition of aluminum nitride at different temperatures

Duta, L. and Stan, G. E. and Stroescu, H. and Gartner, M. and Anastasescu, M. and Fogarassy, Zsolt (2016) Multi-stage pulsed laser deposition of aluminum nitride at different temperatures. APPLIED SURFACE SCIENCE, 374. pp. 143-150. ISSN 0169-4332

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Abstract

We report on multi-stage pulsed laser deposition of aluminum nitride (AlN) on Si (1 0 0) wafers, at different temperatures. The first stage of deposition was carried out at 800 °C, the optimum temperature for AlN crystallization. In the second stage, the deposition was conducted at lower temperatures (room temperature, 350 °C or 450 °C), in ambient Nitrogen, at 0.1 Pa. The synthesized structures were analyzed by grazing incidence X-ray diffraction (GIXRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), atomic force microscopy and spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE). GIXRD measurements indicated that the two-stage deposited AlN samples exhibited a randomly oriented wurtzite structure with nanosized crystallites. The peaks were shifted to larger angles, indicative for smaller inter-planar distances. Remarkably, TEM images demonstrated that the high-temperature AlN "seed" layers (800 °C) promoted the growth of poly-crystalline AlN structures at lower deposition temperatures. When increasing the deposition temperature, the surface roughness of the samples exhibited values in the range of 0.4-2.3 nm. SE analyses showed structures which yield band gap values within the range of 4.0-5.7 eV. A correlation between the results of single- and multi-stage AlN depositions was observed. © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

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