Indium Gallium Arsenide Compounds Created Using HVPE Technique

Green-blue- violet light emitters based on III-nitride compounds are typically fabricated utilizing InGaN alloys in active region of the optoelectronic devices. Most of these materials are grown by metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE).

TDI, an Oxford Instruments company, has recently advanced the Hydride Vapour Phase Epitaxy (HVPE) technology to the growth of InGaN. HVPE is best known for its capability to grow low defect, crack free, high quality quasi bulk GaN and AlN materials at a significantly high growth rate of up to 100 µm/hour.

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

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 (x~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 layer (x~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 LEDs production in the near future,” commented by Dr. Alexander Syrkin, Deputy Director and team leader for the InGaN project at TDI.

Recently, the study on the growth of InGaN by HVPE at Oxford Instruments-TDI was rewarded with a substantial funding from a US government agency. “We are very excited and honoured to be part of the US government research program. We strongly believe that we are just at the edge of discovering the substantial potential of the HVPE technology for the solid state lightning industry in the near future,” commented by Bernard Scanlan, General Manager at Oxford Instruments-TDI.