Significant reduction of AlN wafer bowing grown on sapphire substrate with patterned graphene oxide

Abstract We demonstrated experimentally that an approximate 15% reduction in wafer bowing was achieved by spray-coating of graphene oxide (GO) with an O-ring pattern on the sapphire substrate before the metal organic chemical vapor deposition-grown AlN template. At the 1350 °C growth temperature of AlN, GO was thermally reduced to graphene, which is favorable to alleviate thermal compressive stress between the AlN template and sapphire substrate during the cooling process due to the natural high thermal conductivity of graphene. Consequently, the GO O-ring pattern can play an important role in dramatically reduce cracks, edge delamination and threading dislocation density of AlN templates grown on sapphire substrates.