Epitaxy of GaN on silicon—impact of symmetry and surface reconstruction

GaN-on-silicon is a low-cost alternative to growth on sapphire or SiC. Today epitaxial growth is usually performed on Si(111), which has a threefold symmetry. The growth of single crystalline GaN on Si(001), the material of the complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) industry, is more difficult due to the fourfold symmetry of this Si surface leading to two differently aligned domains. We show that breaking the symmetry to achieve single crystalline growth can be performed, e.g. by off-oriented substrates to achieve single crystalline device quality GaN layers. Furthermore, an exotic Si orientation for GaN growth is Si(110), which we show is even better suited as compared to Si(111) for the growth of high quality GaN-on-silicon with a nearly threefold reduction in the full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the -scan. It is found that a twofold surface symmetry is in principal suitable for the growth of single crystalline GaN on Si.