Abstract
A highly chemical reactive ion etching process has been developed for MOVPE-grown GaN on sapphire. The key element for the enhancement of the chemical property during etching is the use of a fluorine containing gas in a chlorine based chemistry. In the perspective of using GaN substrates for homo-epitaxy of high quality GaN/AlGaN structures we have used the above described RIE process to smoothen Ga-polar GaN substrates. The RMS value, measured by AFM, went from 20 Å (after mechanical polishing) down to 4 Å after 6 minutes of RIE. Etching N-polar GaN resulted in a higher etch rate than Ga-polar materials (165 vs. 110 nm/min) but the resulting surface was quite rough and suffers from instability problems. Heat treatment and HCl dip showed a partial recovery of Schottky characteristics after RIE.
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Karouta, F., Jacobs, B., Moerman, I. et al. Highly Chemical Reactive Ion Etching of Gallium Nitride. MRS Online Proceedings Library 595, 1176 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1557/PROC-595-F99W11.76
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1557/PROC-595-F99W11.76