Growth of wurtzite AlScN thin films on commercial Silicon and SOI (111) substrates using PAMBE

AlScN is a rapidly developing ferroelectric nitride material for applications spanning wide-bandwidth filters, high-electron-mobility transistors, MEMS, among other things. However, a large lattice mismatch between AlScN and Silicon presents challenges for epitaxial integration of AlScN films with Silicon substrates. We report the effects of temperature, Scandium composition and III-V ratio on the epitaxial growth of high quality AlScN monocrystalline thin films. By using a thin AlN seed layer, we are able to obtain 100-200nm AlScN films with rocking curve FWHM’s as low as 1800 arcsec, with low surface RMS roughness.