United States of America as Represented by the Secretary of the Air Force

Qing S Paduano

David W Weyburne

Michael R Snure

Gene P Siegel

A semiconductor device includes a mechanical release layer, such as a van der Waals buffer layer, with a predetermined material roughness and thickness adjacent to a first substrate; a nucleation layer adjacent to the mechanical release layer; and a first semiconductor layer attached to the nucleation layer. The first semiconductor layer, the nucleation layer, and a portion of the mechanical release layer are releasably connected to the first substrate. The predetermined material roughness and thickness of the mechanical release layer determines a bonding strength of the first semiconductor layer to the first substrate. The semiconductor device may include an aluminum nitride insert layer adjacent to the first semiconductor layer; an aluminum gallium nitride barrier layer adjacent to the aluminum nitride insert layer; and a second semiconductor layer adjacent to the aluminum gallium nitride barrier layer. The semiconductor device may include a second substrate attached to the released first semiconductor layer.

Growth of III-nitride semiconductors on thin van der Waals buffers for mechanical lift off and transfer

The invention works by taking optical reflectance measurements on the deposited layers at different wavelengths and fitting the measured results to extract the thicknesses and compositions. The process of the present invention simultaneously measures the thicknesses of elemental and binary semiconductors' layers and the thicknesses and composition of ternary layers. Highly precise thickness and composition estimates and wafer maps of the growth rates and composition are provided by (1) measuring in a wavelength range at which the index of refractions are rapidly varying and (2) growing a special high reflectance test structure consisting of alternating layers of the materials to be measured.

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Arlington, MA, United States of America

Qing S Paduano