Enhancement of the c-axis texture of aluminum nitride by an inductively coupled plasma reactive sputtering process

Inductively coupled plasma reactive sputtering technique has been applied to grow highly oriented aluminum nitride on Si(111) at high process pressure. An inductive coil of 3 and 1/4 turns was introduced to generate a plasma zone near the substrate holder, which provides additional energy to the radicals inside the plasma zone. The full width at half-maximum of the X-ray rocking curve of AlN(0002) is reduced from 7.90° to 4.05° when the inductive coil power is raised from 0 to 180 W. The enhancement of the c-axis texture of AlN is attributed to the increase of the density of the sputtered Al atoms of high energy.