Reduction of Dislocation Density in HVPE-Grown GaN Epilayers by Using In Situ-Etched Porous Templates

In this paper, a method was demonstrated to reduce the dislocation density of GaN film grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) on an in situ selective hydrogen-etched GaN/sapphire template. The dislocations regions were etched by hydrogen to form cavities. The porous structure was formed on the GaN template grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition after in situ hydrogen etching. The etching condition was optimized by modulating the etching temperature, pressure, and etching time. Two-step buffer layer growth and high temperature GaN film deposition were carried on the porous template. The growth parameters were optimized to keep the porous structure unfilled. The dislocations originally located in etched cavities could not propagate to the next layer grown by HVPE. Therefore, the dislocation density could be significantly reduced. High crystal quality of GaN is obtained with a low dislocation density. The full width at half-maximum FWHM of (002) is 35 arcs, and the FWHM of (102) is 48 arcs.