Indium versus hydrogen-terminated GaN(0001) surfaces: Surfactant effect of indium in a chemical vapor deposition environment

First-principles pseudopotential density functional calculations of the relative stability of H- and In-terminated GaN(0001) surfaces are reported. These total energy calculations show that surfaces terminated by one or two monolayers of In are more stable under typical metalorganic vapor deposition conditions than the H-terminated surface structures that have been proposed. Indium may act as a surfactant to improve the growth morphology of GaN films grown by metalorganic vapor deposition via a mechanism similar to that operative in molecular beam epitaxy. (C) 2004 American Institute of Physics.