Hydride vapour-phase epitaxy (HVPE) is an

epitaxial Epitaxy (prefix ''epi-'' means "on top of”) is a type of crystal growth or material deposition in which new crystalline layers are formed with one or more well-defined orientations with respect to the crystalline seed layer. The deposited cry ...

growth technique often employed to produce

semiconductors A semiconductor is a material with electrical conductivity between that of a conductor and an insulator. Its conductivity can be modified by adding impurities (" doping") to its crystal structure. When two regions with different doping levels ...

such as GaN, GaAs, InP and their related compounds, in which

hydrogen chloride The Chemical compound, compound hydrogen chloride has the chemical formula and as such is a hydrogen halide. At room temperature, it is a colorless gas, which forms white fumes of hydrochloric acid upon contact with atmospheric water vapor. Hyd ...

is reacted at elevated temperature with the group-III metals to produce gaseous metal chlorides, which then react with

ammonia Ammonia is an inorganic chemical compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the chemical formula, formula . A Binary compounds of hydrogen, stable binary hydride and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinctive pu ...

to produce the group-III nitrides. Carrier gasses commonly used include

hydrogen Hydrogen is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol H and atomic number 1. It is the lightest and abundance of the chemical elements, most abundant chemical element in the universe, constituting about 75% of all baryon, normal matter ...

and various

chloride The term chloride refers to a compound or molecule that contains either a chlorine anion (), which is a negatively charged chlorine atom, or a non-charged chlorine atom covalently bonded to the rest of the molecule by a single bond (). The pr ...

s. HVPE technology can significantly reduce the cost of production compared to the most common method of vapor deposition of organometallic compounds (

MOCVD Metalorganic vapour-phase epitaxy (MOVPE), also known as organometallic vapour-phase epitaxy (OMVPE) or metalorganic chemical vapour deposition (MOCVD), is a chemical vapour deposition method used to produce single- or polycrystalline thin films. ...

). Cost reduction is achieved by significantly reducing the consumption of NH₃, cheaper source materials than in MOCVD, reducing the capital equipment costs, due to the high growth rate. Developed in the 1960s, it was the first epitaxial method used for the fabrication of single GaN crystals. Hydride vapour-phase epitaxy (HVPE) is the only III–V and III–N semiconductor crystal growth process working close to equilibrium. This means that the condensation reactions exhibit fast kinetics: one observes immediate reactivity to an increase of the vapour-phase supersaturation towards condensation. This property is due to the use of chloride vapour precursors GaCl and InCl, of which dechlorination frequency is high enough so that there is no kinetic delay. A wide range of growth rates, from 1 to 100 micrometers per hour, can then be set as a function of the vapour-phase supersaturation. Another HVPE feature is that growth is governed by surface kinetics: adsorption of gaseous precursors, decomposition of ad-species, desorption of decomposition products, surface diffusion towards kink sites. This property is of benefit when it comes to selective growth on patterned substrates for the synthesis of objects and structures exhibiting a 3D morphology. The morphology is only dependent on the intrinsic growth anisotropy of crystals. By setting experimental growth parameters of temperature and composition of the vapour phase, one can control this anisotropy, which can be very high as growth rates can be varied by an order of magnitude. Therefore, we can shape structures with various novel aspect ratios. The accurate control of growth morphology was used for the making of GaN quasi-substrates, arrays of GaAs and GaN structures on the micrometer and submicrometer scales, GaAs tips for local spin injection. Fast dechlorination property is also used for the VLS growth of GaAs and GaN nanowires with exceptional length.

References

Chemical vapor deposition Thin film deposition Semiconductor device fabrication {{Engineering-stub