TDI advances HVPE technology

TDI, an Oxford Instruments company, has recently advanced the Hydride Vapour Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) technology to the growth of InGaN.

Green-blue violet light emitters based on III-nitride compounds are typically fabricated utilising InGaN alloys in active regions of opto-electronic devices.

Most of these materials are grown by metal organic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).

HVPE is known for its capability to grow low-defect, crack-free quasi bulk GaN and AlN materials at a high growth rate of up to 100um/hour.

Based on GaCl3-InCl3-NH3 system, the new HVPE technique developed by the team at TDI is able to precisely control the growth rate of InGaN down to 1-2um/hour and indium content of up to 43 per cent.

The technique of X-ray diffraction reciprocal space mapping (RSM) is used to study the strain relaxation of the InGaN layers.

The studies show that low In-content InxGa1-xN (0.08 to 0.15) layers were either fully strained or partially relaxed, with relaxation strongly depending on layer thickness and full relaxation for higher In-content layers (0.2 to 0.4).

The results were recently presented at the Second International Symposium on Growth of III-Nitrides in Izu, Japan and the 2008 International Workshop on Nitride Semiconductors in Montreux, Switzerland.

'This study further confirms the ability of HVPE to grow high-quality InGaN layers and extend its capability for blue-green LED production in the near future,' said Dr Alexander Syrkin, deputy director and team leader for the InGaN project at TDI.

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