Growth of <i>a</i>-plane InN on <i>r</i>-plane sapphire with a GaN buffer by molecular-beam epitaxy

We report heteroepitaxial growth of InN on r-plane sapphire substrates with an AlN nucleation layer and GaN buffer using plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy. The InN film was identified to be nonpolar (112̄0) a-plane which follows the a-plane GaN buffer. Optical absorption and photoluminescence measurements of this material show that InN has a fundamental band gap of about 0.7 eV, which is also seen for growth on c-plane sapphire. The room-temperature Hall mobility of undoped a-plane InN is around 250 cm2/V s with a carrier concentration around 6×1018 cm−3. We also studied the electrical properties of the a-plane InN as a function of film thickness. In contrast to c-plane InN grown on c-plane sapphire, we did not observe apparent improvement of electrical properties of a-plane InN by growing thicker films.