Growth mechanisms of GaN/GaAs nanostructures by droplet epitaxy explained by complementary experiments and simulations

Abstract: In this work, we present conception and study of gallium nitride (GaN) nanostructures on a gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrate with (111)A orientation. The nanostructures were designed by GaN droplet epitaxy and studied in-situ by X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ex-situ by atomic force microscopy, scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. These studies were coupled with kinetic Monte Carlo simulations to precisely understand the phenomena occurring during the nitridation and to find the optimum conditions for complete nitridation of gallium droplets. The HRTEM observation showed a cubic (zinc blende) crystal structure of the GaN nanodots for a nitridation at 300{\deg}C. Ramping the temperature from 100{\deg}C to 350{\deg}C during droplet nitridation enabled to obtain a very high density (>1011cm-2) of GaN nanodots with the zinc blende crystallinity.