Relationship between appearance crystalline planes and growth temperatures during sublimation growth of AlN crystals

Self-seeded growth of aluminum nitride single crystals in BN crucible was conducted by sublimation method. It was found that the growth temperature played a critical role in the determination of the crystal morphologies and the appearance crystalline planes. The (0 0 0 1) and pseudo (112¯0) planes were often present at low and high temperature, respectively. The self-seeded crystals possess high structural quality which were assessed by high resolution X-ray diffractometry with a full-width at half-maximum of 35.76 arcsec. Step flow mechanism for the growth of AlN similar to SiC growth was confirmed with the aid of atomic force microscopy.