Hot Wall Low Pressure Chemical Vapor Deposition Growth And Characterization Of Gan And Epitaxial Aln On Si 111

The physical and electronic properties of aluminum nitride (AlN) have made it attractive for a wide variety of applications, including bulk and surface acoustic wave (B/SAW) resonators and thin film dielectric coatings. Due to its wide band gap of 6.2 eV, AlN is a good insulator. The chemical durability of AlN makes it appealing for extreme environmental conditions. Its thermal expansion coefficient is similar to those of other semiconductor materials such as Si and SiC, making it appropriate for use in high temperature applications as well. In this work, we demonstrate the growth of AlN and GaN thin films using hotwall low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) in order to obtain epitaxial AlN growth with a parallelizable, inexpensive method (relative to the current epitaxial growth method, molecular beam epitaxy). This dissertation demonstrates the growth of aluminum nitride thin films (between 70 nm and 1 [MICRO SIGN]m in thickness) on Si (111) substrates using hot-wall low pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) at 1000 ? C and 2 torr. Prior to growth, the substrates were pretreated in situ with dichlorosilane cleaning step, the parameters of which were varied to optimize the c-axis alignment of the grown thin film AlN. In addition, nucleation time for the aluminum precursor, trimethylaluminum (TMAl) was varied and optimized. X-ray diffraction (XRD) was performed on the samples for characterization. With the optimal nucleation time and dichlorosilane pretreatment, the 2[theta]-[omega] FWHM of the resulting AlN film was 1160 arcsec, and the FWHM of the [omega] rocking curve was 1.6? . These optimal parameters exhibited epitaxial AlN peaks aligned with the Si (111) substrate when characterized using a tilted phi scan XRD technique. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) provides a second epitaxial alignment confirmation. Backside etching of the Si (111) substrate to create freestanding AlN thin film drums is demonstrated. This access to the back side of the AlN thin films allows the fabrication of future bulk acoustic wave (BAW) resonator devices and testing the piezoelectric response of these materials. For alternate applications, GaN was grown on AlN buffer layers on Si (111) substrates using hot-wall LPCVD. The resulting film was c-axis aligned, with an XRD FWHM of 1420 arcsec for the GaN (001) 2[theta]-[omega] peak, and the FWHM of the rocking curve was 3.8? . Capacitance-voltage data on the grown GaN on AlN indicate n-type films with residual electron concentrations of roughly 1017 cm[-]3 .