Photoluminescence (PL) studies in GaN thin films grown by infrared close space vapor transport (CSVT-IR) in vacuum are presented in this work. The growth of GaN thin films was done on a variety of substrates like silicon, sapphire and fused silica. Room temperature PL spectra of all the GaN films show near band-edge emission (NBE) and a broad blue and green luminescence (BL, GL), which can be seen with the naked eye in a bright room. The sample grown by infrared CSVT on the silicon substrate shows several emission peaks from 2.4 to 3.22 eV with a pronounced red shift with respect to the band gap energy. The sample grown on sapphire shows strong and broad ultraviolet emission peaks (UVL) centered at 3.19 eV and it exhibits a red shift of NBE. The PL spectrum of GaN films deposited on fused silica exhibited a unique and strong blue-green emission peak centered at 2.38 eV. The presence of yellow and green luminescence in all samples is related to native defects in the structure such as dislocations in GaN and/or the presence of amorphous phases. We analyze the material quality that can be obtained by CSVT-IR in vacuum, which is a high yield technique with simple equipment set-up, in terms of the PL results obtained in each case.

We have studied the Mg doping of cubic GaN grown by plasma-assisted Molecular Beam Epitaxy (PA-MBE) over GaAs (001) substrates. In particular, we concentrated on conditions to obtain heavy p-type doping to achieve low resistance films which can be used in bipolar devices. We simulated the Mg-doped GaN transport properties by density functional theory (DFT) to compare with the experimental data. Mg-doped GaN cubic epitaxial layers grown under optimized conditions show a free hole carrier concentration with a maximum value of 6 × 10¹⁹ cm⁻³ and mobility of 3 cm²/Vs. Deep level transient spectroscopy shows the presence of a trap with an activation energy of 114 meV presumably associated with nitrogen vacancies, which could be the cause for the observed self-compensation behavior in heavily Mg-doped GaN involving Mg-V_N complexes. Furthermore, valence band analysis by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and photoluminescence spectroscopy revealed an Mg ionization energy of about 100 meV, which agrees quite well with the value of 99.6 meV obtained by DFT. Our results show that the cubic phase is a suitable alternative to generate a high free hole carrier concentration for GaN.

While the “clean-up” effect on III-V substrates has recently been well documented interfacial reactions during atomic layer deposition (ALD) on Ge substrates are not fully explored. The “clean-up” of Ge oxides is studied by interrupting the ALD process following individual precursor pulses for in situ monochromatic x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis. Germanium oxides are found to be reduced by TMA and water, while an interfacial GeON layer is only affected by the initial TMA pulse. Oxide free germanium surfaces behave analogously to a surface with initial native oxides since they are oxidized measurably prior to the first TMA pulse due to residual oxidants in a commercial ALD chamber.

We report on the growth of GaAs/AlAs layers by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs (100) substrates patterned with mesa stripes oriented along the [001] direction. The GaAs growth led to the formation of {110} facets which were smoother than the facets formed on [01̄1]- and [01̄1̄]-oriented mesa stripes. It was also found that the GaAs growth rate on the {110} facets is extremely low. We fabricated quantum wire-like structures by narrowing the width of the mesa-top (100) facet, which is limited by the (11̄0) and (110) facets, to the nanometer scale, and then growing an AlAs/GaAs quantum well. The resulting structure was as narrow as ∼30 nm with a thickness of ∼30 nm at its center.