Surfactant Antimony enhanced Indium incorporation on InGaN (000-1) surface: a DFT study

TL;DR

This study uses first-principles calculations to show that antimony surfactants can enhance indium incorporation in InGaN surfaces, potentially improving high-In-content material growth for optoelectronic devices.

Contribution

It reveals the surfactant effect of antimony on indium incorporation in InGaN, providing fundamental insights for optimizing high-In-content InGaN growth.

Findings

Sb adatoms induce tensile sites, promoting In incorporation.

Surface stress analysis supports the surfactant effect of Sb.

Surface phase diagram guides growth conditions.

Abstract

InGaN is an ideal alloy system for optoelectronic devices due its tunable band gap. Yet high-quality InGaN requires high In concentration, which is a challenging issue that limits its use in green-light LEDs and other devices. In this paper, we investigated the surfactant effect of Sb on the In incorporation on InGaN (000-1) surface via first-principles approaches. Surface phase diagram was also constructed to determine surface structures under different growth conditions. By analyzing surface stress under different structures, we found that Sb adatom can induce tensile sites in the cation layer, enhancing the In incorporation. These fi ndings may provide fundamental understandings and guidelines for the growth of InGaN with high In concentration.