Fabrication of wafer-scale nanoporous AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet distributed Bragg reflectors via one-step selective wet etching

In this paper, we reported on wafer-scale nanoporous (NP) AlGaN-based deep ultraviolet (DUV) distributed Bragg reflectors (DBRs) with 95% reflectivity at 280 nm, using epitaxial periodically stacked n-Al(0.62)Ga(0.38)N/u-Al(0.62)Ga(0.38)N structures grown on AlN/sapphire templates via metal–organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD). The DBRs were fabricated by a simple one-step selective wet etching in heated KOH aqueous solution. To study the influence of the temperature of KOH electrolyte on the nanopores formation, the amount of charge consumed during etching process was counted, and the surface and cross-sectional morphology of DBRs were characterized by Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and atomic force microscopy (AFM). As the electrolyte temperature increased, the nanopores became larger while the amount of charge reduced, which revealed that the etching process was a combination of electrochemical and chemical etching. The triangular nanopores and hexagonal pits further confirmed the chemical etching processes. Our work demonstrated a simple wet etching to fabricate high reflective DBRs, which would be useful for AlGaN based DUV devices with microcavity structures.