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    High-temperature annealing of AlN films grown on 4H-SiC
    (New York, NY : American Inst. of Physics, 2020) Brunner, F.; Cancellara, L.; Hagedorn, S.; Albrecht, M.; Weyers, M.
    The effect of high-temperature annealing (HTA) at 1700 °C on AlN films grown on 4H-SiC substrates by metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy has been studied. It is shown that the structural quality of the AlN layers improves significantly after HTA similar to what has been demonstrated for AlN grown on sapphire. Dislocation densities reduce by one order of magnitude resulting in 8 × 108 cm-2 for a-type and 1 × 108 cm-2 for c-type dislocations. The high-temperature treatment removes pits from the surface by dissolving nanotubes and dislocations in the material. XRD measurements prove that the residual strain in AlN/4H-SiC is further relaxed after annealing. AlN films grown at higher temperature resulting in a lower as-grown defect density show only a marginal reduction in dislocation density after annealing. Secondary ion mass spectrometry investigation of impurity concentrations reveals an increase of Si after HTA probably due to in-diffusion from the SiC substrate. However, C concentration reduces considerably with HTA that points to an efficient carbon removal process (i.e., CO formation). © 2020 Author(s).
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    Electromechanical losses in carbon- and oxygen-containing bulk AlN single crystals
    (Amsterdam [u.a.] : Elsevier Science, 2019) Kogut, Iurii; Hartmann, Carsten; Gamov, Ivan; Suhak, Yuriy; Schulz, Michal; Schröder, Sebastian; Wollweber, Jürgen; Dittmar, Andrea; Irmscher, Klaus; Straubinger, Thomas; Bickermann, Matthias; Fritze, Holger
    Bulk single-crystalline aluminum nitride (AlN) is potentially a key component for low-loss high-temperature piezoelectric devices. However, the incorporation of electrically active impurities and defects during growth of AlN may adversely affect the performance of piezoelectric resonators especially at high temperatures. The electrical conductivity and electromechanical losses in bulk AlN single crystals are analyzed in the temperature range of 300–1200 K with respect to various contents of growth-related impurities in them. For AlN with [O]/[C] ≤ 1, an increase of electrical conductivity due to thermal activation of charge carriers in the temperature range of 850–1200 K has been observed and was determined to be a major contribution to electromechanical losses Q−1 rising up to maximum values of about 10−3 at 1200 K. As the oxygen content in AlN increased, the magnitude and the activation energy of high-temperature electrical conductivity increased. In oxygen-dominated AlN, two major thermally activated contributions to electromechanical losses were observed, namely, the anelastic relaxations of point defects at temperatures of 400–800 K and electrical conductivity at T > 800 K.