RF‐MBE growth of InN on 4H‐SiC (0001) with off‐angles

Abstract

We have grown InN on 4H‐SiC (0001) substrates with various off‐angles by RF‐N2 plasma molecular beam epitaxy (RF‐MBE). Scanning electron microscope observation revealed that InN films grown on 4H‐SiC (0001) substrates with off‐angles of 4° and 8° are very smooth and that there are no voids which have often observed for InN epitaxial layers. X‐ray diffraction reciprocal space maps for InN grown on 4H‐SiC (0001) showed that the c‐axes of InN grown on 4H‐SiC 4° and 8° off substrates are inclined by 0.35° and 0.8°, respectively, toward the misorientation of the substrate while the c‐axis of InN is parallel to that of 4H‐SiC for the on‐axis substrate. Strong PL peak was observed from InN grown on 4° off substrate at 0.68 eV at 15 K. The PL peak was clearly observed even at room temperature and simply shifted to lower energies with increasing temperature. The difference in the PL peak energy between at 15 K and 300 K was 20 meV, which is reasonable taking into account the difference in the thermal coefficients of InN and SiC (© 2010 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)