Anisotropic characteristics of a-plane GaN films grown on γ-LiAlO2 (302) substrates by MOCVD

Abstract Single crystalline wurtzite a-plane GaN films were deposited on (3 0 2) LiAlO2 (LAO) substrates by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The high resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) results and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) patterns in cross section indicated that the crystallographic orientation between LAO and wurtzite GaN was: [3 0 2]LAO parallel to [ 1 1 2 ¯ 0 ] GaN , [ 2 ¯ 0 3 ] LAO parallel to [ 1 1 ¯ 0 0 ] GaN and [0 1 0]LAO parallel to [0 0 0 1]GaN, the mismatches were −4.43%, −2.86% and −0.31%, respectively. When the incident beam parallel (or perpendicular) to the [0 0 0 1] direction of GaN, the FWHM values of ω-scans reached the minimum (or maximum). The a-GaN film was found to have steps along [ 10 1 ¯ 0 ] direction and strips coalesced parallel to [0 0 0 1] direction. The PL intensity of the emission peak around 364 nm reduced a lot when the polarization changed from E⊥c to E||c.