Stopping Power and Energy Straggling of Channeled He-Ions in GaN

GaN epitaxial layers are usually grown on sapphire substrates. To avoid disastrous effect of the large lattice mismatch a thin polycrystalline nucleation layer is grown at 500°C followed by the deposition of thick GaN template at much higher temperature. Remnants of the nucleation layer were visualized by transmission electron microscopy as defect agglomeration at the GaN/sapphire interface and provide a very useful depth marker for the measurement of channeled ions stopping power. Random and aligned spectra of He ions incident at energies ranging from 1.7 to 3.7 MeV have been measured and evaluated using the Monte Carlo simulation code McChasy. Impact parameter dependent stopping power has been calculated for channeling direction and its parameters have been adjusted according to experimental data. For virgin, i.e. as grown, samples, the ratio of channeled to random stopping power is constant and amounts to 0.7 in the energy range studied. Defects produced by ion implantation largely influence the stopping power. For channeled ions the variety of possible trajectories leads to different energy loss at a given depth, thus resulting in much larger energy straggling than that for the random path. Beam energy distributions at different depths have been calculated using the McChasy code. They are significantly broader than those predicted by the Bohr formula for random direction.