Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Nucleation And Growth Of Gan On Sapphire By Mbe, Steven Buczkowski

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

GaN was grown by molecular beam epitaxy in an effort to determine nucleation and growth conditions which lead to high quality, single-crystal films. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to show that growth under Ga-rich conditions promotes the nucleation of films with large nucleation domains leading to a lower density of intrinsic defects related to domain boundaries. These conditions are also shown to promote a 2-D growth mode resulting in films with a high degree of nucleation domain coalescence and surface roughnesses below 2 nm. Addition of atomic hydrogen, using a thermally-cracked source, is shown to increase the growth rate …