JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHYSICS

VOLUME 95, NUMBER 12

15 JUNE 2004

Importance of lattice matching and surface arrangement

for the helicon-wave-excited-plasma sputtering epitaxy of ZnO
T. Koyama and S. F. Chichibua)
Institute of Applied Physics and Graduate School of Pure and Applied Sciences, University of Tsukuba,
1-1-1 Tennodai, Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan

Received 6 October 2003; accepted 22 March 2004

Importance of lattice matching and proper surface arrangement of the substrate was shown to obtain
better epilayer qualities of ZnO grown by an epitaxy method, the helicon-wave-excited-plasma
sputtering epitaxy. The a-axis-locked single-domain 0001 ZnO epitaxy was accomplished on the
0) Al O substrate. The epilayer had approximately
uniaxially nearly lattice-matched (112
2 3
50-100-nm-diam atomically smooth two-dimensional terraces with 0.26-nm-high monolayer steps,
and exhibited a predominant near-band-edge photoluminescence peak, whose full width at half
maximum value was 107 meV at room temperature. The a-axis-locked epitaxy was also realized on
a lattice-mismatched (0001) Al2 O3 substrate, indicating the compatibility of oxide substrates.
However, the ZnO epilayer grown on the 0001 AlN epitaxial template prepared on (0001) Al2 O3
had an in-plane 12-fold multidomain structure, though the effective lattice-mismatch between
0 ZnO and 112
0 AlN is smaller than that between 112
0 ZnO and 101
0 Al O . Proper
112
2 3
purification and polarity-control techniques for the AlN surface, and/or insertion of an appropriate
buffer layer are required to form single-domain heterovalent ZnO/AlN interfaces. 2004
American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.1739294

use of helicon-wave-excited plasma HWP, of which physics and experiments have been reported in early 90s,2023 as
a sort of remote plasma source for the sputtering deposition
of semiconductor thin films. As the first step, very smooth,
highly 0001-oriented, low-resistivity (5104 cm), and
transparent Al-doped ZnO thin films have been deposited on
the glass substrate without additional annealing in oxygen
ambient.19 These achievements are due to the properties of
HWP, which can be excited under relatively higher vacuum
(104 Torr) producing a high density and lower ion energy
plasma. Subsequently, completely a-axis-locked six-fold
0001 orientation ZnO epilayers have been grown on
(0001) Al2 O3 substrates.24 According to the achievement of
near-band-edge emission at room temperature from the epilayers due to the surface-damage-free nature, the technique
was named helicon-wave-excited-plasma sputtering epitaxy HWPSE.24 The atomic species responsible for the
film growth during HWPSE of ZnO was recently found by in
situ sputtered-plume emission spectroscopy measurements25
to be excited neutral Zn Zn*, as well as nonradiative species such as molecular ZnO. Since the growth rate was
limited by the sticking coefficient of Zn, the growth mode of
HWPSE was concluded to be similar to that of LMBE.25
Therefore, a proper technique to control the initial stage of
the growth such as surface arrangements as well as lattice
matching is considered to be important.
ZnO has a band gap energy of 3.37 eV, and has a wurtzite crystal structure with the a lattice parameter of 3.250 .
The relation between the band gap energies and in-plane lattice parameters a of ZnO, MgO, CdO, and Al,In,GaN semiconductors is summarized in Fig. 1a. ZnO films have been
usually grown on 0001 face of Al2 O3 substrates, because

I. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, ZnO and related alloys are attracting

attention, since they are excellent candidates for use in visible and ultraviolet light emitters, transparent field-effect
transistors, sensors, and piezoelectric devices due to their
crystal symmetry, large exciton binding energy 59 meV,1
and large band gap comparable to that of GaN. To fabricate
ultrathin quantum structures of abrupt interfaces, researches
on the epitaxial formation of ZnO have been accelerated using a variety of methods such as laser-assisted molecular
beam epitaxy LMBE,25 MBE,6 10 chemical vapor
deposition,11 and metalorganic vapor phase epitaxy
MOVPE.12 As a result of the research progress, stimulated
emissions due to the strong Coulomb interaction excitonic
gain from ZnO epilayers have been reported2,3,7 and fine
structures due to the formation of exciton-polaritons1,13,14
have been found in the reflectance15,16 and photoluminescence PL16,17 spectra of ZnO epilayers. Moreover, attempts
to grow p-type ZnO5,11,18 have been reported to date.
Sputtering methods can prepare large-area films of wellcontrolled compositions economically. The growth rate is
high enough for thick films and low enough for ultrathin
films by changing the sputtering rate of the target. However,
the surface damage caused by high energy sputtering particles is a serious problem. Moreover, exposing the growing
surface in the plasma sometimes causes contamination or
resputtering. In order to overcome these problems and to
make use of the advantages of sputtering techniques for thin
film epitaxy, one of the present authors has proposed19 the
a

Author to whom correspondence should be addressed; electronic mail:

optoelec@bk.tsukuba.ac.jp

0021-8979/2004/95(12)/7856/6/$22.00

7856

2004 American Institute of Physics

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J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 95, No. 12, 15 June 2004

T. Koyama and S. F. Chichibu

7857

matched or nearly lattice-matched oxide substrates such as

bulk ZnO single crystals,18 ScAlMgO4 substrates26 having
0) face of
the in-plane lattice mismatch of 0.09%, and (112
8
Al2 O3 . As shown in Fig. 1c, the c-axis length of Al2 O3
nearly agrees with four times the a axis of ZnO, giving the
in-plane effective uniaxial lattice mismatch of 0.08% along
0 ZnO and 0001 Al O . 8
112
2 3
In addition to earlier mentioned substrates, GaN and related group III-nitride semiconductors are also a possible
candidate for the substrate of ZnO epitaxy, since they crystallize in a hexagonal wurtzite structure and the lattice mismatch is smaller than that between ZnO and (0001) Al2 O3 ,
as shown in Fig. 1a. The lattice parameters of GaN are a
0.3186 nm and c0.5178 nm. Therefore, the in-plane lattice mismatch between ZnO and GaN is still as large as
2.0%. However, the value is much better than that between
ZnO and Al2 O3 , and high quality ZnO epilayers grown on
the GaN/Al2 O3 epitaxial templates have been demonstrated
by Vispute et al.27 and Gil et al.28 Similarly, AlN, whose
lattice parameters are a0.3112 nm and c0.4982 nm, is
also nominated as a substrate for the ZnO growth due to the
stacking order matching and relatively small in-plane lattice
mismatch 4.4% compared to that between ZnO and
Al2 O3 (18.3%). However, there have been no reported results on the epitaxial growth of ZnO on AlN, except for the
deposition of polycrystalline films.29
In this article, the importance of lattice matching and
proper arrangement of the substrate surface is shown for obtaining better quality ZnO epilayers by a middle-vacuum
epitaxial growth technique, HWPSE. The ZnO film grown on
the 0001 AlN template contained 12-fold multidomains rotated by 30 due to the presence of Aloxynitrides on the
surface. Conversely, a-axis-locked sixfold ZnO epilayers
were grown on the uniaxially nearly lattice-matched
0) Al O and lattice-mismatched (0001) Al O sub(112
2 3
2 3
strates, indicating the compatibility of oxide substrates.

II. EXPERIMENT
FIG. 1. a Energy gap E g vs a-lattice parameter of ZnO, MgO, CdO, and
Al, In, GaN semiconductors. Equivalent lattice parameters of 0001 and
0) Al O are also shown by vertical broken lines. Epitaxial relation(112
2 3
0) Al O . For simplicity, Zn
ships of 0001 ZnO on b 0001 and c (112
2 3
0) Al O substrate are
atoms in the ZnO epilayer and O atoms in the (112
2 3
selectively shown in c.

sapphire ( -Al2 O3 ) is well suited for future production

needs due to its low cost and high crystalline perfection.
However, the lattice mismatch between ZnO and
(0001) Al2 O3 is as large as 18.3% under the preferential
00 ZnO 112
0 Al O , where
in-plane epitaxial relation 11
2 3
their a axes are rotated by 30 each other, as shown in Fig.
1b. In addition, ZnO epilayer suffers from the stress due to
the thermal expansion mismatch. To solve these problems,
parts of the research efforts have been focused on searching
high quality, lattice- and thermal-matched substrates. Indeed,
good quality ZnO epilayers have been grown on lattice-

A schematic representation of the HWPSE system is

shown in Fig. 2.24 It consisted of i a vacuum deposition
chamber in which a 99.999% pure 2-in.-diam. undoped ZnO
target and the substrate, which will be described later, heated
by a SiC heater were placed; ii a 5-cm-diam. 24-cm-long
quartz tube inlet surrounded by a Nagoya type-III antenna30
through which a cw rf field 13.56 MHz was supplied; iii
the electromagnetic coils to apply a weak field gradient; and
iv a pumping system. The HWP excited from the
99.9995%-pure Ar/99.99995%-pure O2 mixture was introduced into the chamber by the field gradient. Accordingly,
the plasma beam was even softly irradiated on the tilted target, under which a permanent magnet was placed to focus
the HWP. The velocity of Ar cations onto the target was
accelerated by the negative dc bias (V t ) applied on back of
the target holder. Note that discharging due to the dc bias
was not observed. Our configuration enables depositing thin
films softly19,24,25 due to the elimination of plasma bombardment of the substrate.

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7858

J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 95, No. 12, 15 June 2004

FIG. 2. Schematic diagram of the HWPSE apparatus sc HW-6P. The

helicon-wave plasma was excited in a quartz tube. The continuous-wave rf
13.56 MHz power was supplied from a Nagoya type-III antenna, and the
magnetic field 100 G was supplied from the two coils to adjust the field
gradient.

By using the HWP, approximately 0.50.8-m-thick

0) Al O subZnO films were grown on 0001 and (112
2 3
strates and on the 0001 AlN epitaxial template.31 The AlN
template31 consisted of a 2-m-thick undoped AlN epilayer
grown by low-pressure MOVPE on a (0001) Al2 O3 substrate. Details of the AlN template will be found
elsewhere.31,32 The Al2 O3 substrates and AlN template were
cleaned by organic solvents and rinsed in a de-ionized water.
They were loaded into the chamber and baked in vacuum
prior to the growth. The growth temperature was varied from
600 to 750 C typically 700 C. Typical rf power ( P rf), V t ,
background pressure, and growth pressure were 700 W,
360 V, 4106 Torr, and 5104 Torr, respectively. The
epitaxial growth was carried out for 12 h.
The crystallographic orientations and mosaicity were
characterized using x-ray diffraction XRD 2 and outplane rocking scans for the (000n) diffraction. A scan
was used to determine the in-plane orientations. The surface
morphology was observed with scanning electron microscopy SEM and atomic force microscopy AFM techniques. PL was excited by the 325.0 nm line of a cw HeCd
laser 15 mW, and was dispersed by a grating monochromator and detected phase-sensitively by a GaAs:Cs photomultiplier.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Epitaxial orientations

In XRD measurements, mosaicity, compositional variation, and strain distribution can be analyzed separately. Two
popular scans, namely scan rocking scan and 2 scan
are conventionally used to evaluate the crystalline mosaicity
and the distribution of out-plane lattice constant, respectively. A mosaic crystal is defined as an ensemble of perfect
crystal blocks, whose sizes vary around a mean value, with
lattice planes tilted with respect to each other. The mosaicity
in the hexagonal crystal can be divided into two portions;
i.e., tilting misorientation in c-axis and twisting misorien-

T. Koyama and S. F. Chichibu

tation in a axis. The former causes the spectral broadening

in the rocking curve of a symmetric (000n) diffraction
peaks, and the latter causes the broadening in the rocking
curve of an asymmetric diffraction peaks. The degree of inhomogeneity in a- or c-axis length corresponds to the degree
of an inhomogeneous lattice-relaxation, and the peak widths
of the 2 diffraction peak are limited by the coherence
lengths and heterogeneous strain distributions.
Representative 2 XRD patterns of the ZnO epilayers
0) Al O substrates and the 0001
grown on 0001 and (112
2 3
0) Al O , and
AlN template ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 , ZnO/(112
2 3
ZnO/0001 AlN, respectively at 700 C are shown in Figs.
3a, 3c, and 3e, respectively. As expected from the inplane lattice-matching conditions, all the ZnO films showed
the c 0001 orientation growth. Values of full width at half
maximum FWHM of the 0002 ZnO diffraction peak
0) Al O , 0.18 for ZnO/
2 were 0.13 for ZnO/(112
2 3
0001 AlN, and 0.19 for ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 . The latticematching conditions and the FWHM values are summarized
in Table I. The FWHM value seems to increase with the
increase in in-plane lattice mismatch 0.08%, 4.4%, and
18.3%, respectively, and the results can be explained by
the enhanced inhomogeneous lattice relaxation in highly
lattice-mismatched systems. However, FWHM values of the
0) Al O ,
0002 ZnO scans were 0.48 for ZnO/(112
2 3
1.10 for ZnO/0001 AlN, and 0.66 for ZnO/
(0001) Al2 O3 . Obviously, the value for ZnO/0001 AlN
was larger than that of ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 . The result indicates that tilting of the c axis in the ZnO/0001 AlN structure is larger, though the lattice mismatch for the former is
smaller than that for the latter. The large tilting may imply
the presence of high-density dislocations having a screw
component,33 as has been observed in GaN epilayers.
In-plane -scanning XRD patterns for ZnO/
0) Al O , and ZnO/0001 AlN are
(0001) Al2 O3 , ZnO/(112
2 3
shown in Figs. 3b, 3d, and 3f, respectively. From the
3) ZnO and (112
3) Al O diffraction peaks,
position of (101
2 3
epitaxial relations of the ZnO epilayers grown on the Al2 O3
substrates were derived, and are also summarized in Table I.
In Table I, values of in-plane lattice mismatches were calculated according to the actual epitaxial relations. As expected,
a-axes of the ZnO epilayer on the (0001) Al2 O3 substrate
were rotated by 30 from those of the Al2 O3 substrate, in
order to ensure better lattice matching 18.3%. As shown
0) Al O was
in Fig. 3d, the epitaxial relation for ZnO/(112
2 3

0001 ZnO 1120 Al2 O3 and 1120 ZnO 0001 Al2 O3 .

Because the effective in-plane lattice mismatch between the
c axis of Al2 O3 1.299 nm and four times the a axis of ZnO
0.325 nm is as small as 0.08%, a axes of the 0001 ZnO
epilayer were completely locked on the c-axis of
0) Al O substrate.8,9 Conversely, the ZnO epilayer on
(112
2 3
the 0001 AlN template showed a 12-fold multidomain
0 or
growth, whose a axes are parallel to either 112

1010 AlN, although the a axes of the underlying AlN

0 of the (0001) Al O
were completely parallel to 101
2 3
substrate. One of the reasons for the multidomain
growth can be attributed to the small difference in the
effective lattice mismatches between the epitaxial

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J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 95, No. 12, 15 June 2004

T. Koyama and S. F. Chichibu

7859

0) Al O , and e ZnO/0001 AlN epitaxial template. Panels b, d, and f show

FIG. 3. XRD 2 scan profiles for a ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 , c ZnO/(112
2 3
3) diffraction peak of the 0001 orientation ZnO epilayers and (112
3) diffraction peak of
the corresponding XRD in-plane -scanning patterns for the (101
the Al2 O3 substrates.

0 ZnO 112
0 AlN(4.4%)
relations
and
112

1120 ZnO 1010 AlN(9.7%).

According to the failure in the a-axis locking in ZnO/
3) ZnO diffrac0001 AlN, the value of FWHM of the (101
tion peaks in the scans increased from 1.37 for
0) Al O , 2.57 for ZnO/(0001) Al O , and up to
ZnO/(112
2 3
2 3
3.03 for ZnO/0001 AlN. Since the broadening of the
-scan peak means the enhanced twisting of the a axes, the

results imply the presence of high-density dislocations having an edge component33 in ZnO/0001 AlN. Combined
with the result that ZnO/0001 AlN exhibited the largest
FWHM value for the rocking curve, the epilayer is considered to contain very high density dislocations as well as
orientation-domain boundaries, although the lattice and thermal expansion mismatches between ZnO and AlN are
smaller than those between ZnO and Al2 O3 . One of the rea-

TABLE I. Lattice mismatch, epitaxial relations, FWHM values of XRD peaks, and FWHM values of the
near-band-edge PL peak at 293 K for the ZnO epilayers grown by HWPSE.
ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3

0) Al O
ZnO/(112
2 3

ZnO/0001 AlN

(0001) ZnO (0001) Al2 O3

and
0) (101
0)
(112
ZnO
Al2 O3
31.6
18.3 30 rotated

0)
(0001) ZnO (112
Al2 O3
and
0) (0001)
(112
ZnO
Al2 O3
0.08

(0001) ZnO (0001) AlN

and
0) (112
0)
(112
ZnO
AlN

0002 2 deg.b
0002 deg.b
3) deg.b
(101

0.19
0.66
2.57

0.13
0.48
1.37

0.18
1.10
3.03

Surface morphology

Rough
with
precipitates

Smooth with
0.26-nm-high
monolayer steps

Rough
with
precipitates

FWHM of the nearband edge PL peak

meVc

153

107

124

Structure
Epitaxial relations

In-plane lattice
Mismatch %a

4.4
9.7 30 rotated

Check marks represent the preferred epitaxial orientation.

means the value of FWHM.
c
Measured at 293 K.
b

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7860

J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 95, No. 12, 15 June 2004

T. Koyama and S. F. Chichibu

0) Al O , and
FIG. 5. PL spectra of a ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 , b ZnO/(112
2 3
c ZnO/0001 AlN measured at 293 K.

0) Al O substrate
FIG. 4. a AFM image of the ZnO film grown on a (112
2 3
and SEM bird view images of b ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 , c
0) Al O , and d ZnO/0001 AlN. A cross-sectional height proZnO/(112
2 3
0) Al O grown at 700 C is also shown. The step height of
file of ZnO/(112
2 3
0.26 nm corresponds to a half of the c-lattice parameter.

sons for the formation of high density dislocations and multidomains is considered to be the presence of Al
suboxynitrides at the ZnO/AlN interface due to the natural
oxidation of the AlN surface, since the pregrowth surface
treatment of AlN is in principle difficult and the overlayer
ZnO contains oxygen in the matrix. Another possibility is
the formation of polycrystalline spinel ZnAl2 O4 , whose
a-axis length is 0.80848 nm, at the ZnO/AlN interface.34
Moreover, the formation of inversion domains is probable,
since most of IIInitride epilayers grown by MOVPE grow
toward the 0001 face group-III polarity35,36 while ZnO
)
epilayers grown by LMBE in usual grow toward the (0001
37
face O polarity. Therefore, a proper purification technique
for the AlN surface or the insertion of an appropriate buffer
layer is necessary to form a single-domain ZnO/AlN heterointerface.
B. Surface morphology and PL spectra

The surface morphology of ZnO epilayers grown by

HWPSE was strongly influenced by the lattice mismatch and
growth temperature. Bird-view SEM images of the ZnO ep 0) Al O substrates at
ilayers grown on 0001 and (112
2 3
750 C and on the 0001 AlN template at 700 C are shown
in Figs. 4b, 4c, and 4d, respectively. As for the epilayers
on Al2 O3 , ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 exhibited a rough and textured morphology having approximately 100 nm wide crystallites on the surface. Conversely, a dramatic improvement
of the surface flatness was achieved by increasing the growth
temperature from 650 C data not shown to 750 C for
0) Al O , as shown in Fig. 4c. Indeed, the ZnO
ZnO/(112
2 3
0) Al O substrate under the opepilayer grown on the (112
2 3
timized conditions showed very smooth surface having

atomically flat two-dimensional 2D terraces, as shown in

the AFM image in Fig. 4a. Each 2D island had the terrace
width of approximately 50100 nm and the step hight of
0.26 nm, which corresponds to a half of the c-axis length.
These structural and morphological features resemble those
typically obtained for the epilayers grown by conventional
2D epitaxial growth methods such as LMBE and MBE.
Accordingly, low-temperature 8 K optical reflectance spec 0) Al O exhibited free A- and
trum of the ZnO/(112
2 3
B-excitonic anomalies at 3.377 and 3.386 eV.25 At 8 K, the
PL spectrum exhibited a bound excitonic peak at 3.356 eV,
whose FWHM value was 15 meV, and higher energy shoulders corresponding to free excitons between 3.37 and 3.39
eV Ref. 25.
It is known that incoherent boundaries and structural defects that are formed due to the large lattice-mismatch induced three-dimensional 3D growth. As a result, 3D crystallites might precipitate on the surface, as shown in Figs.
4b and 4d for ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 and ZnO/0001 AlN,
respectively. It should be noted that ZnO/0001 AlN contained the rotated multidomains, and consequently the surface was rougher than that of the epilayers grown on the
Al2 O3 substrates.
Room-temperature 293 K PL spectra of ZnO/
0) Al O , and ZnO/0001 AlN
(0001) Al2 O3 , ZnO/(112
2 3
grown at 700 C are shown in Figs. 5a, 5b, and 5c,
respectively. The near-band-edge PL peak energies were
3.26, 3.28, and 3.29 eV for respective samples, and the PL is
assigned as being due to the recombination of excitons
bound to certain impurities or defects. The PL peak energy of
ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 was slightly lower than that of
0) Al O and ZnO/0001 AlN. This redshift may
ZnO/(112
2 3
be due to the formation of a band-tail, since the value of
FWHM of the PL peak 153 meV is larger than that for
other epilayers and the spectral lineshape is asymmetric with
respect to the photon energy. As summarized in Table I, the
FWHM value of the near-band edge PL peak for ZnO/0001
AlN 124 meV was smaller than that for ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3
153 meV, although ZnO/0001 AlN contained the rotated
multidomains. This reduction in the FWHM value can be
explained to be due to the enhanced lattice relaxation for the
multidomain ZnO/0001 AlN, since the residual strain
changes the exciton transition energies,28,38 and the deviation

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J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 95, No. 12, 15 June 2004

of a-or c-axis length due to the strain might be reflected to

the FWHM value of the PL peak. Indeed, 2 value of the
0002 ZnO diffraction peak for ZnO/0001 AlN 0.18 is
slightly smaller than that for ZnO/(0001) Al2 O3 0.19, as
shown in Table I. Note that the FWHM value of 107 meV for
0) Al O was fairly
the near-band edge PL peak in ZnO/(112
2 3
comparable to that of the ZnO epilayers grown by LMBE15
or MBE,16,39 indicating that HWPSE can grow high optical
quality epilayers under the lattice-matching conditions with
proper surface arrangements.
IV. CONCLUSIONS

The importance of both lattice matching and preparation

of proper surface arrangement of the substrate was shown for
the HWPSE of ZnO epilayers. All ZnO epilayers on the
0) and (0001) Al O substrates and on the 0001 AlN
(112
2 3
epitaxial template exhibited the c 0001 orientation growth.
The use of in-plane uniaxially nearly lattice-matched
0) Al O substrate enabled to fabricate the a-axis
(112
2 3
locked, single-domain ZnO epilayers having approximately
50100 nm diam. atomically smooth 2D terraces with monolayer steps. The single-domain growth was also achieved on
the (0001) Al2 O3 substrate under the in-plane epitaxial rela 0 ZnO 101
0 Al O . Conversely, in-plane 30tion 112
2 3
rotated multidomain structures were obtained for 0001
ZnO/0001 AlN, though the effective in-plane lattice mis 0) ZnO and (112
0) AlN is smaller than
match between (112

that between (1120) ZnO and (1010) Al2 O3 . The result suggested the formation of interfacial suboxynitrides, ZnAl2 O4
spinels, or inversion domains. Proper purification processes
for the AlN surface or the insertion of appropriate buffer
layers are required to form single-domain heterovalent ZnO/
AlN interfaces. Achievements of the atomically flat 2D terraces, excitonic features in the low-temperature optical spectra, and a predominant near-band-edge PL peak FWHM
107 meV at room temperature in the ZnO epilayer grown
0) Al O substrate indicate that HWPSE can be
on the (112
2 3
regarded as one of the promising epitaxial growth techniques
to fabricate high-quality ultrathin quantum structures having
atomically abrupt heterointerfaces for future device applications.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors are grateful to Dr. M. Tanaka and Dr. T.

Shibata of NGK Insulators Inc. and Dr. H. Okumura of National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology AIST for supplying the AlN/Al2 O3 epitaxial template
and Al2 O3 substrates. They are grateful to M. Sugiyama, T.
Onuma, T. Ohmori, and N. Shibata for help with the experiments. This work was supported in part by the 21st Century
COE Center of Excellence program Promotion of Creative Interdisciplinary Materials Science for Novel Functions and Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research Nos.
15656080 and 16360146 under MEXT, and The Inamori
Foundation.
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