Effects of slight misorientation of GaN templates on molecular-beam-epitaxy growth of ZnO

Both the growth mechanism and material properties of ZnO epilayers are found to be strongly dependent on slight misorientation of GaN templates. The observation by in situ reflection high-energy electron diffraction and atomic force microscopy reveals that the growth mode changes from a three-dimensional to a two-dimensional growth mechanism, as the misorientation of GaN templates is varied from [0001] just to 0.2 degree toward the a axis. However, ZnO grows under a three-dimensional mode for misorientation toward the m axis. The observed changes in the growth mechanism are discussed in terms of the different surface migration length along the m and a axis, which is caused by the different surface atomic arrangement along the a and m axis. With an increase in the misorientation angle from 0 to 0.2degrees toward the a axis, the linewidth of (0002) x-ray rocking curve shows a dramatic narrowing from 1768 to 277 arcsec, while the photoluminescence intensity of exciton emission shows a remarkable enhancement by more than one order of magnitude. Such improvement in material properties can be ascribed to the observed change of the growth mode from three- to two-dimensional growth. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.