Studies of a group III nitrides thin film growth

Abstract

This thesis examines the nanoscale morphology evolution during AlN and InN thin film growth. We used synchrotron-based real-time grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering (GISAXS), in order to study the plasma-assisted atomic layer epitaxy (ALEp) process. The substrate for deposition was single-crystal GaN. We designed the load lock and other parts for the experiment, then performed experiments at the National Synchrotron Light Source-II of Brookhaven National Laboratory. Post-facto X-ray Diffraction (XRD), X-ray Reflection (XRR), Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy-dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDS), and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) were performed at Boston University. In addition, Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulations were performed to compare with the synchrotron x-ray studies