Hydrogen-mediated nitrogen clustering in dilute III-V nitrides.
First-principles calculation reveals multi-N clusters to be the ground states for hydrogenated N in dilute III-V nitrides. While hydrogenation of a single N, forming H2*(N), can relax the large strain induced by the size-mismatched N, formation of the clusters will relax the strain even more effectively. This suppresses the formation of H2*(N), the existence of which has recently been debated. More importantly, postgrowth dehydrogenation of the N-H clusters provides an explanation to the observed metastable bare N clusters in GaAsN grown by gas-source molecular beam epitaxy or metal-organic chemical vapor deposition.
Du
Mao-Hua
MH
National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden, Colorado 80401, USA.
Limpijumnong
Sukit
S
Zhang
S B
SB