Study of the role of superstructural phases and interfacial properties on the growth of InN films

Abstract

Semiconductors have revolutionised many aspects of life over the past 50 years. Techniques which have led to low cost, high density processing of silicon have resulted in silicon integrated circuits becoming ubiquitous within modern society. The astonishing progress which has been achieved in the processing of silicon is encompassed by Moore's law.1 In 1965, only 5 years after the first planar integrated circuit was produced, Gordon Moore noted that the density of transistors being fabricated on silicon integrated circuits was doubling approximately every 2 years. Remarkably this trend has continued to the present day and the latest generation of microprocessors now pack more than half a billion transistors onto a square centimetre. While the ability of semiconductors to rapidly process information may be the most visible application, semiconductors are used in applications as wide reaching as solid state lighting, power distribution, photovoltaics, lasers and high speed communication. When considering which semiconductor is preferred for a given application, a number of material properties must be considered. High frequency devices rely on high peak carrier drift velocities along with compatibility with high k dielectrics. For light emitting applications, the size and nature of the electronic band gap must be considered, while high power operation requires the material to be relatively insensitive to moderate changes in temperature.