Epitaxial Growth of III-Nitride/Graphene Heterostructures for Electronic Devices

Epitaxial GaN films were grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on functionalized epitaxial graphene (EG) using a thin (approxmately 11 nm) conformal AlN nucleation layer. Raman measurements show a graphene 2D peak at 2719 cm(exp -1) after GaN growth. X-ray diffraction analysis reveals [0001]-oriented hexagonal GaN with (0002) peak rocking curve full width at the half maximum (FWHM) of 544 arcsec. The FWHM values are similar to reported values for GaN grown by MOCVD on sapphire. The GaN layer has a strong room-temperature photoluminescence band edge emission. Successful demonstration of GaN growth on EG opens up the possibility of III nitride/graphene heterostructure-based electronic devices and promises improved performance.
Published in Applied Physics Express v6 article 061003; published online 7 Jun 2013. The original document contains color images.