High-quality TiN/AlN thin film heterostructures on c-sapphire

Abstract We have developed TiN/AlN/c-sapphire epitaxial heterostructures and compared it with TiN/c-sapphire epitaxial heterostructures, needed for GaN-based LEDs and lasers. AlN is used as a buffer layer to provide a high misfit strain and facilitate the 2D growth on sapphire. The large misfit strain between sapphire and AlN makes this substrate a great candidate for GaN-based devices because it guarantees a full relaxation of AlN thin films through domain matching epitaxy paradigm. TiN can also act as an excellent contact and bottom electrode for Ⅲ-Ⅴ nitrides. Also, the introduction of TiN as a buffer layer decreases the critical thickness beyond which dislocations can grow in GaN thin films due to higher misfit strain compared to sapphire, which also improves the quality of potential GaN thin films. The selected-area-electron-diffraction patterns, scanning transmission electron microscopy, and transmission Kikuchi diffractions along with atomic arrangement simulations revealed that films are epitaxial with the following relationships: TiN ‖AlN[ 1 ¯ 2 1 ¯ 0]‖sapphire[01 1 ¯ 0] (in-plane), and TiN ‖AlN[0001]‖sapphire[0001] (out-of-plane). This is equivalent to a 30° rotation of Al basal plane in AlN with respect to that in sapphire. In TiN/c-sapphire epitaxial platforms, there is a 30° rotation: TiN ‖sapphire[01 1 ¯ 0] (in-plane), and TiN ‖sapphire[0001] (out-of-plane). It is shown that these heterostructures are fully relaxed in terms of misfit strains and only thermal strain stays as unrelaxed. The domain matching epitaxy paradigm is used to rationalize the epitaxial growth. The details of dislocations nucleation and glide in these heterostructures were studied and the results also discussed to elucidate the mechanism of strain relaxation.