Synchrotron white beam X-ray topography, transmission electron microscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction studies of defects and strain relaxation processes in wide band gap semiconductor crystals and thin films

A review is presented of recent research into imaging on different length scales of defect structures in wide band gap semiconductors. This includes: synchrotron white beam X-ray topography (SWBXT) imaging of defects in SiC wafers and epilayers; high-resolution X-ray diffraction (HRXRD) and high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) studies of strain relaxation in AlN and GaN epilayers on on-axis and vicinal SiC and sapphire substrates; TEM studies of fault structures in GaN/AlN films on SiC substrates; and TEM studies of threading dislocation density reduction driven by growth mode modification in AlN films grown on sapphire substrates. In detail, studies of closed-core and hollow-core screw dislocations, basal plane dislocations and stacking faults (SFs) in 4H- and 6H-SiC substrates and films are presented. The mechanism of improved mismatch strain relaxation associated with the growth of GaN (AlN) films on vicinal substrates is discussed. This is attributed to the combined effects of mutual tilt between the epilayer and the substrate, which helps to relax out-of-plane mismatch, and by the generation of geometric partial misfit dislocations (GPMDs), which serves both to relax in-plane mismatch and accommodate stacking differences between the epilayer and substrate at some proportion of the steps at the substrate/film interface. In addition, the formation mechanisms of intersecting SF structures observed in GaN/AlN/SiC epilayers are presented. These fault structures comprise SFs that fold back and forth from the basal plane (I1 Basal Plane Faults; BSFs) to the prismatic plane (Prismatic Stacking Faults; PSFs). Finally, the threading dislocation density reduction in AlN/sapphire films is modeled based on overgrowth of the dislocation outcrops by macrosteps which appear during a transition from step flow to 2D layer-by-layer growth.