Influence of AlN buffer layer thickness on the properties of GaN epilayer on Si(1 1 1) by MOCVD

The effect of thickness of the high-temperature (HT) AlN buffer layer on the properties of GaN grown on Si(1 1 1) has been investigated. Optical microscopy (OM), atomic force microscopy (AFM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) are employed to characterize these samples grown by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The results demonstrate that the morphology and crystalline properties of the GaN epilayer strongly depend on the thickness of HT AlN buffer layer, and the optimized thickness of the HT AlN buffer layer is about 110 nm. Together with the low-temperature (LT) AlN interlayer, high-quality GaN epilayer with low crack density can be obtained.