InN film was grown on 4H-SiC (0001) substrate by RF plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (RF-MBE). Prior to the growth of InN film, an InN buffer layer with a thickness of 5.5 nm was grown on the substrate. Surface morphology, microstructure and structural quality of InN film were investigated. Micro-structural defects, such as stacking faults and anti-phase domain in InN film were carefully investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results show that a high density of line contrasts, parallel to the growth direction (c-axis), was clearly observed in the grown InN film. Dark field TEM images recorded with diffraction vectors g D 11 N 20 and g D 0002 revealed that such line contrasts evolved from a coalescence of the adjacent misoriented islands during the initial stage of the InN nucleation on the substrate surface. This InN nucleation also led to a generation of anti-phase domains.

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Transmission electron microscopy and high resolution X‐ray diffraction were applied to characterize the crystal structure and its modification in c‐InN layers on GaAs (001) substrates grown by rf‐plasma assisted molecular beam epitaxy. The layer quality was shown to depend on growth conditions, namely In‐ and N‐rich conditions. The best quality of c‐InN layers was achieved by “stoichiometric” growth under the In‐rich condition, resulting in In‐rich layers with a small amount of hexagonal‐phase inclusion (∼8%). On the other hand, nucleation and growth of N‐rich layers are shown to result in a high density of stacking faults which drastically decreases toward the InN surface. It is argued that the presence of stacking faults contributes to the structural modification in these layers. We found that the existence of a structural modification from cubic to mixed cubic/hexagonal phase in microstructure of the N‐rich layers exhibit higher hexagonal‐phase incorporation than that of the In‐rich layers. (© 2009 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)