Coulon, P-M., Feng, P., Damilano, B. et al. (3 more authors) (2020) Influence of the reactor environment on the selective area thermal etching of GaN nanohole arrays. Scientific Reports, 10 (1). 5642. ISSN 2045-2322
Abstract
Selective area thermal etching (SATE) of gallium nitride is a simple subtractive process for creating novel device architectures and improving the structural and optical quality of III-nitride-based devices. In contrast to plasma etching, it allows, for example, the creation of enclosed features with extremely high aspect ratios without introducing ion-related etch damage. We report how SATE can create uniform and organized GaN nanohole arrays from c-plane and (11–22) semi-polar GaN in a conventional MOVPE reactor. The morphology, etching anisotropy and etch depth of the nanoholes were investigated by scanning electron microscopy for a broad range of etching parameters, including the temperature, the pressure, the NH3 flow rate and the carrier gas mixture. The supply of NH3 during SATE plays a crucial role in obtaining a highly anisotropic thermal etching process with the formation of hexagonal non-polar-faceted nanoholes. Changing other parameters affects the formation, or not, of non-polar sidewalls, the uniformity of the nanohole diameter, and the etch rate, which reaches 6 µm per hour. Finally, the paper discusses the SATE mechanism within a MOVPE environment, which can be applied to other mask configurations, such as dots, rings or lines, along with other crystallographic orientations.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2020 The Authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Keywords: | Materials science; Optical materials and structures; Synthesis and processing |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/M003132/1 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/M015181/1 ENGINEERING AND PHYSICAL SCIENCE RESEARCH COUNCIL EP/P006973/1 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 08 Apr 2020 13:35 |
Last Modified: | 08 Apr 2020 13:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41598-020-62539-1 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:158951 |