ABSTRACT:

The authors have investigated the growth and structural and electrical properties of homoepitaxial GaN layers and GaN/AlGaN heterostructures grown on free-standing, hydride vapor phase epitaxy grown, N-polar GaN:Fe substrates by rf-plasma molecular beam epitaxy. Secondary-ion mass spectroscopic analysis of unintentionally doped and Be-doped N-polar GaN layers indicate that oxygen is the dominant impurity in all layers and is largely insensitive to growth temperature in the range investigated (675 °C < TS < 760 °C). Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) indicates that threading dislocations are generated at the regrowth interface in these samples; in contrast to homoepitaxial growth on Ga-polar GaN, and that the density of threading dislocations diminishes as the growth temperature increases. However, examination by TEM indicates that threading dislocations are not generated at the regrowth interface of samples subjected to pregrowth substrate surface cleaning by gallium deposition and desorption and subsequent growth of ultrathin (15 Å) initial AlN layers. N-polar GaN/AlGaN heterostructures grown on Be-doped homoepitaxial N-polar GaN buffers exhibit low buffer leakage and Hall mobilities up to 1680 cm2/Vs at sheet densities of 1.3 × 1013 cm-2. High electron mobility transistors have been fabricated on these structures; drain current densities over 700 mA/mm and breakdown voltages as high as 70 V have been measured.