Growth of dilute GaSbN layers by liquid-phase epitaxy

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Abstract

We report the growth of dilute GaSbN layers on GaSb substrates by liquid-phase epitaxy using polycrystalline GaN as the source of nitrogen in the growth melt. Atomic force microscopy shows uniform layer surface with root mean square roughness of 2.6 nm. Energy dispersive X-ray measurements confirm the presence of nitrogen in the grown layer. The material is further characterized by high-resolution X-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy measurements. Nitrogen incorporation up to 1.7% is obtained with a corresponding band gap reduction of 0.37 eV.

Introduction

Dilute III–V nitrides are attracting a great deal of interest nowadays due to their remarkable property of reducing the band gap of the parent III–V semiconductor, with the introduction of marginal amounts of nitrogen in the host lattice [1], [2]. The quaternary InGaAsN is considered to be most important due to its potential application in 1.55-μm optical communication [3]. It has recently been shown that dilute nitrides, based on group III antimonides, could act as an alternative material system for optoelectronic devices at 1.55 μm [4] as well as in the mid-infrared region [5]. The materials investigated so far are GaSbN [6], GaAsSbN [7] and GaInAsSbN [8]. Molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) technique has been mostly used for the growth of such materials, whereas techniques like metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy (MOVPE) and ion implantation have been used for the growth of other III–V dilute nitrides. We have recently shown that liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) technique can be successfully used for the growth of dilute GaAsN layers containing up to 0.5% nitrogen and affecting a band gap reduction of 100 meV [9], [10]. In this work, we demonstrate the first ever successful use of LPE technique to grow GaSbN layers, using polycrystalline GaN as the source of nitrogen.

Section snippets

Experimental procedure

The layers were grown in a conventional horizontal LPE system using the sliding boat technique. The growth melt for GaSbN was composed by saturating 99.9999% Ga with undoped single crystal GaSb, to which polycrystalline GaN powder was added. Polycrystalline GaN was grown by a chemical vapor deposition method at Anna University, Chennai. Initially, Ga was baked in the furnace for 10 h at 800 °C under ultrapure hydrogen flow to reduce the dissolved oxygen in the metal and to remove the volatile

Results and discussion

All the LPE-grown GaSbN layers exhibited good surface morphology and mirror-polished surfaces. Layer surfaces, examined by AFM, showed periodic structures with root-mean-square roughness of 2.6 nm (Fig. 1). The presence of nitrogen is indicated by its typical signature in the EDX plot of Fig. 2 for a typical GaSb layer grown from a melt containing nitrogen. From the data, nitrogen content in the layer is approximately obtained as 1%. HRXRD rocking curve for the same sample, shown in Fig. 3,

Conclusion

We have grown dilute GaSbN layers by conventional LPE technique using polycrystalline GaN powder as the source of nitrogen in the growth melt. Excellent surface morphology for the grown layers was revealed by atomic force microscopy with rms roughness of 2.6. X-ray diffraction and infrared absorption measurements yielded nitrogen incorporation up to 1.7% resulting in a band gap reduction of 0.37 eV.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Mr. Joydip Sengupta of IIT, Kharagpur for performing the AFM study. We also thank Prof. A. Dutta and Prof. T. K. Chinni of Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata for their help in the FTIR and EDX measurements and Prof. S. P. Sengupta of the Indian association for the Cultivation of Science, Kolkata for the HRXRD measurements. The work was supported by the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Government of India.

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Present address: Nanoscale Device Research Laboratory, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of Nevada, 4505 Maryland parkway, Las Vegas, NV 89154-4026, USA.

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