Nearly stress-free substrates for GaN homoepitaxy

High-quality 300 μm thick GaN crack-free layers grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) on c-plane sapphire without buffer layers and separated from the substrate by laser lift-off were investigated by high resolution X-ray diffraction (XRD), low-temperature photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence. All these characterization techniques confirm the high structural quality of the resulting material. Lateral X-ray mapping of the free-standing bulk-like GaN shows a homogeneous compressive stress of less than 40 MPa and a heterogeneous stress of about 80 MPa. The formation of twin grains (domains) were observed both in the reciprocal space mapping of the (2 0 .5) reflection and in rocking curve measurements. The latter ones revealed an estimated lateral coherence length of about 1.2 μm. The crystallite size along the c-axis is estimated to be larger than 20 μm. An upper limit of the density of dislocations with a component of the Burgers vector along the c-axis (screw and mixed type) of 1.3×10⁷ cm^-2 was extracted from the XRD data, while transmission electron microscopy measurements revealed a dislocation density of 1.7×10⁷ cm^-2. Thus, these layers are suitable as lattice-parameter and thermal-expansion matched substrates for strain-free homoepitaxy of GaN-based device heterostructures.