Anisotropically biaxial strain in a-plane AlGaN on GaN grown on r-plane sapphire

In this study, the anisotropically biaxial strain in a-plane AlGaN on GaN is investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis using an AlGaN/GaN heterostructure grown on r-plane sapphire. In accordance with XRD reciprocal lattice space mapping, when the AlN molar fraction x in the AlGaN layer is 0.18, the AlGaN layer is fully strained under tensile stress and grows coherently on the underlying GaN layer. However, when x is as large as 0.31, partial relaxation is observed only in the c-axis direction. The tensile stress in the AlGaN layer is calculated taking the actual in-plane lattice constants of the underlying GaN layer into account, and it was found that the stress in the a-plane AlGaN layer in the c-axis direction is approximately 1.7 times larger than that in the in-axis direction.