Growing c-axis oriented aluminum nitride films by plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition at low temperatures

Abstract

The possibility of using plasma enhanced atomic layer deposition method for growing heteroepitaxial oriented AlN films on Si (100) and sapphire (001) substrates at temperatures less than 300 °C was investigated. The resulting samples were studied by X-ray diffraction analysis and ellipsometry. It has been shown that, ceteris paribus, AlN films grown on sapphire substrates have higher crystallinity than the samples grown on silicon wafers. With duration of plasma exposure of more than 20 s and at a temperature of 300 °C synthesized heteroepitaxial film had refractive index equal to 2.03±0.03. The X-ray diffraction scans feature (002) and (004) reflections at 2Θ equal to 35.7° and 75.9°, which are characteristic of hexagonal polytype of AlN. For the best sample, (002) reflection had full width on the half maximum of 162±11″