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Sophisticated thin film growth techniques increasingly rely on the addition of a plasma component to open or widen a processing window, particularly at low temperatures. However, the addition of the plasma into the growth environment also complicates the surface dynamical evolution. Taking advantage of continued increases in accelerator-based X-ray source brilliance, this real-time study uses X-ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy (XPCS) to elucidate the nanoscale surface dynamics during Plasma-Enhanced Atomic Layer Deposition (PE-ALD) of an epitaxial indium nitride film. XPCS examines the evolution of the coherent X-ray scattering speckle pattern, which is a fingerprint of the unique sample microstructure at each moment in time. In PE-ALD, ultrathin films are synthesized from repeated cycles of alternating self-limited surface reactions induced by temporally-separated pulses of material precursor and plasma reactant, allowing the influence of each on the evolving morphology to be examined. During the heteroepitaxial 3D growth examined here, sudden changes in surface structure during initial film growth, consistent with numerous overlapping stress-relief events, are observed. When the film becomes continuous, the nanoscale surface morphology abruptly becomes long-lived with correlation time spanning the period of the experiment. Throughout the growth experiment, there is a consistent repeating pattern of correlations associated with the cyclic growth process, which is modeled as transitions between different surface states. The plasma exposure does not simply freeze in a structure that is then built upon in subsequent cycles, but rather there is considerable surface evolution during all phases of the growth cycle., Comment: 25 pages, 8 figures

A GaN resonant cavity light emitting diode was built on a GaN-AlN distributed Bragg reflector grown on a silicon substrate. The electroluminescence output increased by 2.5 times for a GaN diode coupled to a properly designed resonant cavity. Theoretical calculations showed that this enhancement could increase up to four times for transmission through a sem-transparent metal contact design, up to eight times for a flip-chip design

Vertical diodes of epitaxial graphene on n 4H-SiC were investigated. The graphene Raman spectraexhibited a higher intensity in the G-line than the 2D-line, indicative of a few-layer graphene film.Rectifying properties improved at low temperatures as the reverse leakage decreased over six ordersof magnitude without freeze-out in either material. Carrier concentration of 10 16 cm 3in the SiCremained stable down to 15 K, while accumulation charge decreased and depletion width increasedin forward bias. The low barrier height of 0.08 eV and absence of recombination-induced emissionindicated majority carrier field emission as the dominant conduction mechanism.

Reduced performance in Gallium Nitride (GaN) based high electron mobility transistors (HEMTs) as a result of self-heating has been well-documented. A new approach, termed “diamond-before-gate" is shown to improve the thermal budget of the deposition process and enables large area diamond without degrading the gate metal NCD capped devices had a 20% lower channel temperature at equivalent power dissipation.