AlN interlayer to improve the epitaxial growth of SmN on GaN (0001)

TL;DR

This study demonstrates that depositing a thin AlN interlayer before SmN growth on GaN (0001) templates significantly enhances the crystallinity of SmN films by suppressing Ga surface segregation during molecular beam epitaxy.

Contribution

The paper introduces a simple AlN interlayer technique to improve SmN epitaxial growth on GaN templates, addressing Ga segregation issues.

Findings

AlN interlayer suppresses Ga surface segregation

Crystallinity of SmN improves with AlN interlayer

X-ray diffraction confirms enhanced film quality

Abstract

An in situ study of the epitaxial growth of SmN thin films on Ga-polar GaN (0001)templates by molecular beam epitaxy is reported. Using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy we found that Ga segregates at the surface during the first stages of growth. We showed that the problem related to Ga surface segregation can be simply suppressed by growing a few monolayers of AlN before starting the SmN growth. This results in a significant improvement of the crystallinity of SmN thin films assessed by X-ray diffraction.