Ethan Kleinbaum with Kathy Kash

Plasma Assisted Liquid Phase Epitaxial Growth of GaN

The semiconductor Gallium Nitride is a material widely used in current technological applications. The material has a band gap of 3.4 eV which corresponds to the energy of light in the ultraviolet range of the visible spectrum. This band gap energy allows for the development of LEDs and lasers operating in the yellow to ultraviolet regime. After the first incorporation of GaN into a blue laser in 1989, large volumes of research have focused on the semiconductor. Nonetheless, high quality GaN substrates are still difficult to grow, increasing the price of GaN substrates and making it more economically feasible to grow devices on a non-native material. It is the goal of this project to grow a large, high quality, single crystal of GaN using a Plasma Assisted Liquid Phase Epitaxy (PALPE) system which would significantly reduce the cost of GaN substrates.