Epitaxial growth of AlN films on single-crystalline Ta substrates

✍ Scribed by S. Hirata; K. Okamoto; S. Inoue; T-W. Kim; J. Ohta; H. Fujioka; M. Oshima

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 587 KB
• Volume: 180
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0022-4596
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jssc.2007.06.008

✦ Synopsis

We have demonstrated the first epitaxial growth of AlN films on single-crystalline Ta substrates by the use of a low-temperature growth technique based on pulsed laser deposition (PLD). Although previous AlN films grown on Ta( 100) and ( 111) substrates have exhibited quite poor crystallinity, an epitaxial AlN(0001) film with an in-plane epitaxial relationship of AlN[112 ¯0]//Ta[001] has been obtained on a Ta(110) substrate at a growth temperature of 450 1C. We found that the full-width at half-maximum values for the crystal orientation distribution in the tilt and twist directions of the AlN film were 0.371 and 0.411, respectively. Grazing-incidence X-ray reflection (GIXR) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) measurements have revealed that the AlN/Ta heterointerface is quite abrupt, and that its abruptness remains unchanged even after annealing at 1000 1C.