Improvement of Epitaxy GaN Quality Using Liquid-Phase Deposited Nano-Patterned Sapphire Substrates

A relatively simple and easy and inexpensive liquid-phase deposition (LPD) method is employed to introduce nanoscale silica hemispheres on sapphire substrates for fabricating a nano-patterned sapphire substrate (NPSS). Compared with GaN grown on sapphire without any pattern, the NPSS-GaN film is of much better quality as observed by scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron-microscopy, X-ray diffraction, cathodoluminescence, and photoluminescence. This is because GaN is initiated from the c-plane instead of the LPD-silica surface. In addition, many dislocations within the NPSS-GaN bend toward the patterns, or end at the GaN/void interfaces.