Local electronic and optical behaviors of a-plane GaN grown via epitaxial lateral overgrowth

Conductive atomic force microscopy and near-field optical microscopy (NSOM) were used to study the morphology, conduction, and optical properties of a-plane GaNfilmsgrown via epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) by metal organic chemical vapor deposition. The AFM images for the coalesced ELOfilms show undulations, where the window regions appear as depressions with a high density of surface pits. At reverse bias below 12V, very low uniform conduction (2pA) is seen in the window regions. Above 20V, a lower-quality sample shows localized sites inside the window regions with significant leakage, indicating a correlation between the presence of surface pits and leakage sites. Room temperature NSOM studies explicitly showed enhanced optical quality in the wing regions of the overgrown GaN due to a reduced density of dislocations, with the wings and the windows clearly discernible from near-field photoluminescence mapping