Dresden 2026 – scientific programme

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HL: Fachverband Halbleiterphysik

HL 33: Nitrides I – Growth and fabrication

HL 33.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 11, 2026, 17:00–17:15, POT/0006

Epitaxial Growth of ZrN on Si(111) — •Muthukani Kathiresan, Usha Velpuri, Arne Busse, Florian Hörich, Jürgen Bläsing, Armin Dadgar, and André Strittmatter — Institut für Physik, Otto-von-Guericke Universität Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany

Transition metal nitrides can add new functionalities to GaN devices. These range from conducting buffer layers for the growth of vertical GaN devices on Si, as template for the growth of N-polar GaN up to enhanced piezo- and ferroelectric properties when alloyed with AlN. Transition-metal nitrides (TMNs) such as ZrN, HfN, TiN and ScN crystallize in the rock-salt structure and exhibit metallic conductivity except for ScN which is semiconducting. For nitride growth, ZrN is particularly attractive due to its favorable lattice relationship, exhibiting an in-plane mismatch of only 1.35% between ZrN (111) and GaN (0001). Additionally, ZrN layers can be deposited by sputtering, whereas layer growth by MOVPE suffers from the low-vapor pressure of available precursors.In this work, we present recent progress in the sputter epitaxy of ZrN on Si (111). For 100-nm-thick films grown at 900 °C in N2/NH3, we achieved an ω-FWHM of 0.5°. Introducing NH3 promoted a transition from a columnar grain structure to a compact, two-dimensional morphology, with a surface roughness of 1.7 nm. The thermal stability of these layers was assessed through annealing at 1100 °C under NH3, which led to reduced film density by void formations, revealed by X-ray reflectivity (XRR) measurements and scanning electron microscopy (SEM).

Keywords: Transition Metal Nitrides; Magnetron Sputtering; Epitaxial growth; ZrN; Annealing