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In this article, we combine diffuse x-ray scattering with a Monte Carlo simulation method for the determination of the dislocation density in thin heteroepitaxial layers. As a model, we consider GaN epitaxial layers containing threading dislocations perpendicular to the surface. The densities of particular types of threading dislocations following from the comparison of measured and simulated distributions of diffusely scattered x-ray intensity are compared with the dislocation densities determined by etching. A good agreement was found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-resolution X-ray diffraction in coplanar and noncoplanar geometries has been used to investigate the influence of an SiN x nano-mask in the reduction of the threading dislocation (TD) density of high-quality AlGaN epitaxial layers grown on sapphire substrates. Our developed model, based on a Monte Carlo method, was applied to the simulation of the reciprocal-space maps of a two-layer system. Good agreement was found between the simulation and the experimental data, leading to an accurate determination of the dislocation densities as a function of the overgrowth layer thickness. The efficiency of the SiN x nano-mask was defined as the ratio of the TD densities in the AlGaN layers below and above the mask. A significant improvement in the AlGaN layer quality was achieved by increasing the overgrowth layer thickness, and a TD density reduction scaling law was established. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We used high-resolution x-ray reciprocal space mapping in noncoplanar grazing-incidence geometry for the determination of the density of edge threading dislocations in c-oriented GaN epitaxial layers and we compared the measured intensity distributions with results of numerical Monte Carlo simulations of diffuse scattering. We demonstrated that a combination of diffraction data taken in coplanar symmetric and noncoplanar grazing-incidence geometries makes it possible to obtain the densities of screw and edge threading dislocations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]