• Proceedings of the Korean Vacuum Society Conference
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• 2011.02a
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• pp.48-48
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• 2011

We have developed a chemically-driven top-down approach using vapor phase HCl to form various GaN nanostructures and successfully demonstrated dislocation-free and strain-relaxed GaN nanostructures without etching damage formed by a selective dissociation method. Our approach overcomes many limitations encountered in previous approaches. There is no need to make a pattern, complicated process, and expensive equipment, but it produces a high-quality nanostructure over a large area at low cost. As far as we know, this is the first time that various types of high-quality GaN nanostructures, such as dot, cone, and rod, could be formed by a chemical method without the use of a mask or pattern, especially on the Ga-polar GaN. It is well known that the Ga-polar GaN is difficult to etch by the common chemical wet etching method because of the chemical stability of GaN. Our chemically driven GaN nanostructures show excellent structure and optical properties. The formed nanostructure had various facets depending on the etching conditions and showed a high crystal quality due to the removal of defects, such as dislocations. These structure properties derived excellent optical performance of the GaN nanostructure. The GaN nanostructure had increased internal and external quantum efficiency due to increased light extraction, reduced strain, and improved crystal quality. The chemically driven GaN nanostructure shows promise in applications such as efficient light-emitting diodes, field emitters, and sensors.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.24 no.4
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• pp.135-139
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• 2014

The hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) grown GaN samples to precisely measure the surface characteristics was applied to a molten KOH/NaOH wet chemical etching. The etching rate by molten KOH/NaOH wet chemical etching method was slower than that by conventional etching methods, such as phosphoric and sulfuric acid etching, which may be due to the formation of insoluble coating layer. Therefore, the molten KOH/NaOH wet chemical etching is a better efficient method for the evaluation of etch pits density. The grown GaN single crystals were characterized by using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray rocking curve (XRC). The etching characteristics and surface morphologies were studied by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). From etching results, the optimum etching condition that the etch pits were well independently separated in space and clearly showed their shape, was $410^{\circ}C$ and 25 min. The etch pits density obtained by molten KOH/NaOH wet chemical etching under optimum etching condition was around $2.45{\times}10^6cm^{-2}$, which is commercially an available materials.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers Conference
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• 1999.05a
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• pp.497-500
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• 1999

This paper reports on the fabrication and characteristics of recessed gate GaN MESFETs fabricated using a photoelectrochemical wet etching method. The unique etching process utilizes photo-resistive mask and KOH based etchant. GaN MESFETs with successfully recessed gate structure was characterized in terms of dc and RF performance. The fabricated GaN MESFET exhibits a current saturation at $V_{DS}$ = 4 V and a pinch-off at $V_{GS}$ =-3V The peak drain current of the device is about 230mA/mm at 300 K and the value is remained almost same for 500K operation. The $f_{T}$ and $f_{max}$ from the device are 6.357Hz and 10.25 GHz, respectively.y.y.

• Journal of the Korean institute of surface engineering
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.83-92
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• 1999

GaN etching was performed using planar inductively coupled $Cl_2$-based plasmas and the effects of main process parameters on the characteristics of the plasmas and their relations to GaN etch rates were studied. Also, the GaN etch mechanism was investigated using a Langmuir probe and optical emission spectroscopy (OES) during the etching, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) of the etched surfaces. The GaN etch rates increased with the increase of chlorine radical density and ion energy, and a vertical etch profile haying the etch rate close to 4000 $\AA$/min could be obtained. The addition of 10% Ar to $Cl_2$ gas increased the GaN etch rate and the addition of Ar (more than 20%) and HBr generally reduced the GaN etch rate. The GaN etch rate appeared to be more affected by the chemical reaction between Cl radicals and GaN compared to the physical sputtering itself under the sufficient ion bombardments to break GaN bonds.

• Korean Journal of Metals and Materials
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.169-173
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• 2008

Characteristics of etching and induced surface morphology variation by wet-etching of n-type GaN were investigated using phosphoric acidic solutions. Generally, the etch-rate was increased as the temperature of the etch solutions was increased, and the highest etch rate of about $300{\AA}/min$ was achieved at the temperature of $180^{\circ}C$. The morphology variation of the etched surface was observed by optical microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Initially, high density of hexagonal holes or pits were formed on the etched surface at the time of 40 min with the bimodal size of $20{\mu}m$ or $5{\mu}m$, respectively. However, as the etching time was increased further, the lateral size of the hexagonal holes or pits was increased, and finally, joined and merged together at the time of 100 min. This means that the etching of n-type GaN by phosphoric acidic solutions proceeded through the lateral widening and the merging of initial holes and pits.

• ETRI Journal
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.304-311
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• 2005

We report on the fabrication of an AlGaAs/InGaAs/GaAs pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistor (PHEMT) using a dielectric-defined process. This process was utilized to fabricate $0.12\;{\mu}m\;{\times}\;100 {\mu}m$ T-gate PHEMTs. A two-step etch process was performed to define the gate footprint in the $SiN_x$. The $SiN_x$ was etched either by dry etching alone or using a combination of wet and dry etching. The gate recessing was done in three steps: a wet etching for removal of the damaged surface layer, a dry etching for the narrow recess, and wet etching. A structure for the top of the T-gate consisting of a wide head part and a narrow lower layer part has been employed, taking advantage of the large cross-sectional area of the gate and its mechanically stable structure. From s-parameter data of up to 50 GHz, an extrapolated cut-off frequency of as high as 104 GHz was obtained. When comparing sample C (combination of wet and dry etching for the $SiN_x$) with sample A (dry etching for the $SiN_x$), we observed an 62.5% increase of the cut-off frequency. This is believed to be due to considerable decreases of the gate-source and gate-drain capacitances. This improvement in RF performance can be understood in terms of the decrease in parasitic capacitances, which is due to the use of the dielectric and the gate recess etching method.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.7-11
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• 2011

Sapphire substrate was patterned by a selective chemical wet etching technique, and GaN/InGaN structures were grown on this substrate by MOVPE (Metal Organic Vapor Phase Epitaxy). The surface of grown GaN on patterned sapphire substrate (PSS) has good morphology and uniformity. The patterned sapphire substrate LED showed better light output than conventional LED that improvement 50%. We think these results come from enhancement of internal quantum efficiency by decrease of threading dislocation and increase of light extraction efficiency. Also these LED showed more uniform emission distribution in angle than conventional LED.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.261-264
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• 2012

In this paper, we investigated characteristics of etching induced surface morphology variation by wet etching of GaN epilayer were grown on sapphire (0001) substrate by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). As a results of scanning electron microscope (SEM) observation, three types of hexagonal etch pits (Edge, Screw, Mixed) were formed by the GaN epilayer thickness variations. A lot of etch pits, attributed to screw and mixed type TD, were observed at thinner epilayer, leading to high etch pit density. On the other hand, the thickness of GaN epilayer increased with the number of etch pits corresponding to edge and mixed dislocations, which are the majority of TDs are observed.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Electrical and Electronic Material Engineers
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.152-155
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• 2011

Even though nano-scale materials were very advantageous for various applications, there are still problems to be solved such as the stabilization of surface state and realization of low contact resistances between a semiconducting nanowire and electrodes in nano-electronics. It is well known that the effects of contacts barrier between nano-channel and metal electrodes were dominant in carrier transportation in individual nano-electronics. In this report, it was investigated the electrical properties of GaN nanorod devices after chemical etching and rapid thermal annealing for making good contacts. After KOH wet-etching of the contact area the devices showed better electrical performance compared with non-treated GaN individual devices but still didn't have linear voltage-current characteristics. The shape of voltage-current properties of GaN devices were improved remarkably after rapid thermal annealing as showing Ohmic behaviors with further bigger conductivities. Even though chemical etching of the nanorod surfaces could cause scattering of carriers, in here it was shown that the most important and dominant factor in carrier transport of nano-electronics was realization of low contact barrier between nano-channel and metal electrodes surely.

• Journal of the Korean Crystal Growth and Crystal Technology
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.106-111
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• 2001

The freestanding GaN substrates were grown by hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE) on (0001) sapphire substrate and prepared by using laser induced lift-off. After a mechanical polishing on both Ga and N-surfaces of GaN films with 100$\mu\textrm{m}$ thick, their polarities have been investigated by using chemical etching in phosphoric acid solution, 3 dimensional surface profiler and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES). The composition of the GaN film measured by AES indicted that Ga and N terminated surfaces have the different N/Ga peak ratio of 0.74 and 0.97, respectively. Ga-face and N-face of GaN revealed quite different chemical properties: the polar surfaces corresponding to (0001) plane are resistant to a phosphoric acid etching whereas N-polar surfaces corresponding to(0001) are chemically active.