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The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire

β-Ga(2)O(3) thin films grown on widely available c-plane sapphire substrates typically exhibit structural defects due to significant lattice and thermal expansion mismatch, which hinder the use of such films in electronic devices. In this work, we studied the impact of a nucleation layer on MOCVD-gr...

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Autores principales: Dimitrocenko, Lauris, Strikis, Gundars, Polyakov, Boris, Bikse, Liga, Oras, Sven, Butanovs, Edgars
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9739698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36499857
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma15238362
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author Dimitrocenko, Lauris
Strikis, Gundars
Polyakov, Boris
Bikse, Liga
Oras, Sven
Butanovs, Edgars
author_facet Dimitrocenko, Lauris
Strikis, Gundars
Polyakov, Boris
Bikse, Liga
Oras, Sven
Butanovs, Edgars
author_sort Dimitrocenko, Lauris
collection PubMed
description β-Ga(2)O(3) thin films grown on widely available c-plane sapphire substrates typically exhibit structural defects due to significant lattice and thermal expansion mismatch, which hinder the use of such films in electronic devices. In this work, we studied the impact of a nucleation layer on MOCVD-grown β-Ga(2)O(3) thin film structure and morphology on a c-plane sapphire substrate. The structure and morphology of the films were investigated by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, while the composition was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy. It was observed that the use of a nucleation layer significantly increases the grain size in the films in comparison to the films without, particularly in the samples in which H(2)O was used alongside O(2) as the oxygen source for the nucleation layer growth. Our study demonstrates that a nucleation layer can play a critical role in obtaining high quality β-Ga(2)O(3) thin films on c-plane sapphire.
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spelling pubmed-97396982022-12-11 The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire Dimitrocenko, Lauris Strikis, Gundars Polyakov, Boris Bikse, Liga Oras, Sven Butanovs, Edgars Materials (Basel) Article β-Ga(2)O(3) thin films grown on widely available c-plane sapphire substrates typically exhibit structural defects due to significant lattice and thermal expansion mismatch, which hinder the use of such films in electronic devices. In this work, we studied the impact of a nucleation layer on MOCVD-grown β-Ga(2)O(3) thin film structure and morphology on a c-plane sapphire substrate. The structure and morphology of the films were investigated by X-ray diffraction, atomic force microscopy, transmission and scanning electron microscopy, while the composition was confirmed by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and micro-Raman spectroscopy. It was observed that the use of a nucleation layer significantly increases the grain size in the films in comparison to the films without, particularly in the samples in which H(2)O was used alongside O(2) as the oxygen source for the nucleation layer growth. Our study demonstrates that a nucleation layer can play a critical role in obtaining high quality β-Ga(2)O(3) thin films on c-plane sapphire. MDPI 2022-11-24 /pmc/articles/PMC9739698/ /pubmed/36499857 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma15238362 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Dimitrocenko, Lauris
Strikis, Gundars
Polyakov, Boris
Bikse, Liga
Oras, Sven
Butanovs, Edgars
The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title_full The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title_fullStr The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title_full_unstemmed The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title_short The Effect of a Nucleation Layer on Morphology and Grain Size in MOCVD-Grown β-Ga(2)O(3) Thin Films on C-Plane Sapphire
title_sort effect of a nucleation layer on morphology and grain size in mocvd-grown β-ga(2)o(3) thin films on c-plane sapphire
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9739698/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36499857
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ma15238362
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