Reduction of stress at the initial stages of GaN growth on Si(111)

GaN growth on heterosubstrates usually leads to an initially high dislocation density at the substrate/seed layer interface. Due to the initial growth from small crystallites, tensile stress is generated at the coalescence boundaries during GaN growth. In addition, with tensile thermal stress this leads to cracking of GaN on Si and SiC substrates when cooling to room temperature. By partially masking the typically applied AlN seed layer on Si(111) with an in situ deposited SiN mask a reduction in tensile stress can be achieved for the subsequently grown GaN layer. Additionally, the 6 K GaN band edge photoluminescence is increased by about an order of magnitude and shifts by 21 meV, which can be attributed to a change in tensile stress of ∼0.8 GPa, in good agreement with x-ray diffractometry measurements. This improvement in material properties can be attributed to a reduction of grain boundaries by the growth of larger sized crystallites and lateral overgrowth of less defective GaN.