Films of AlN were grown onto atomically flat 6H-SiC (00•1) C-polarity substrates by using pulsed sputtering deposition at room temperature. Stepped and terraced structures were observed on the surface of the room-temperature grown AlN films, reflecting the two-dimensional growth of AlN films with atomically flat surfaces. The full-width at half-maximum values of the X-ray rocking curves for AlN 00•4 and 10•2 diffractions were as low as 150 and 215arcsec, respectively. The use of X-ray reciprocal space mapping revealed that the introduction of misfit dislocations into the AlN films was suppressed in the case of room-temperature growth. It was also found that misfit dislocations were not introduced by annealing at 1200C; thus indicating that the activation energy for the introduction of dislocations was quite high for the AlN/SiC structure.

Room-Temperature Epitaxial Growth of High Quality AlN on SiC by Pulsed Sputtering Deposition. K.Sato, J.Ohta, S.Inoue, A.Kobayashi, H.Fujioka: Applied Physics Express, 2009, 2[1], 011003