Structural Analysis of Cubic GaN through X-Ray Pole Figure Generation

Abstract
Epilayers of cubic GaN have been grown on (001) GaAs substrates by molecular beam epitaxy using an electron cyclotron resonance (ECR) plasma nitrogen source. In order to study the existence of secondary crystallographic phases in the GaN epilayers, X-ray pole figures were generated on the (001) surfaces of the samples. The exact locations of misoriented cubic and secondary hexagonal phases have been identified and their relative intensities were estimated. The X-ray pole figure technique has been proven to be extremely useful for the structural characterization of cubic GaN epilayers.