Book Review:GaN and Related Materials, Edited by Stephen J. Pearton

Volume 2 of Optoelectronic Properties of Semiconductors and Superlattices, M. O. Manesreh, series editor, ISSN 1023-6619

Reviewed for MIJ-NSR by Eric S. Hellman

When I was first asked to have this book reviewed for MIJ-NSR, I thought I'd send it to someone prominent in the field to review it. But who? When I received the review copy I was faced with a problem: just about all the people I had thought of to write a review were already chapter authors. And the coverage was broad, it looked like a nice book, so I figured I'd do the review myself.

The main problem with this sort of book is inherent in the format. Instead of a complete, coherent overview of a field, this book is a collection of articles with different viewpoints, sometimes overlapping coverage, some important omissions, and a significant time lag. And as the authors of the articles are undoubtably busy doing research and giving invited papers at meetings around the world, sometimes the articles in this sort of book can have a stapled-together sort of quality. For the most part, this book avoids that problem. A few of the articles are a bit focussed on the authors' own work, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. And occasionally the articles contradict one another. For example, in one section, the lattice mismatch between GaN and sapphire is given with the wrong sign as 13.8%; in another section, it is given with the wrong magnitude and sign as 16%. (by wrong I mean mean "different from the sensibly motivated definition given in Matthews' classic Epitaxial Growth").

GaN is a rapidly moving field, so many of the articles will age rapidly. The articles which will remain useful the longest are those that cover more mature fields. Authors for this type of volume are confronted with a difficult choice between writing an exciting but perishible article, and writing a boring but useful article. In this volume, different articles take different approaches.

So, to the articles themselves:

• Jacques Pankove has contributed the obligatory historical overview, and as usual, his article is one of the most thoughtful, timely and up-to-date discussions of topics of current issues. One suggestion he has is that GaN LED's will lead to "mood-adjustable" white lighting.

• Cammy Abernathy presents a reference-rich overview of nitride growth from molecular beams. This article will be a good place to find pointers to the literature, and is best in its discussion of the possible source molecules.

• Although Takashi Matsuoka's contribution is titled simply "Ternary Alloys" his article also does a good job of covering InN growth, substrate materials and some aspects of MOCVD growth. The coverage of ternary alloys is selective rather than comprehensive.

• Monemar, Bergman and Buyanova cover optical characterization of nitrides. This is one of the best articles in the book. The authors have wisely chosen to concentrate on the areas that are best developed experimentally, but they are careful to make clear when an area is still controversial or unclear. Although they cite a whopping 152 references, there is never a feeling that they're just surveying the literature. This article should be required reading for anyone who shows a PL spectrum in a talk.

• Fernando Ponce's article on microstructure of epitaxial thin films starts out with the crystal structure basics of GaN, SiC and sapphire and then reviews a few of the topics he's worked on. He takes the microscopist's point of view that GaN is interesting because it has so many defects. And here I thought GaN was interesting despite all the defects.

• Estreicher and Boucher have written what is essentially a status report on the theory of defects in GaN. They take pains to help the reader figure out what theorists qualitatively agree on and where there are differences.

• Michio Sato's contribution is a detailed one on GaAsN alloys. It's a bit surprising to find this article in this book, since it was such an immature field at the time of its writing. Time will tell whether these alloys prove to be useful or just a curiosity.

• Tansley, Goldys, Godlewski, Zhou and Zuo are well on their way towards writing a book of their own on "The Contribution of Defects to the Electrical and Optical Properties of GaN". I suppose that if they had to write about "The Electrical and Optical Properties of Defect-Free GaN" it would have been an exceedingly short article. In 60 pages and 169 references, just about all topics related to GaN are covered, from substrates to fundamental properties. Most of this article is also covered in articles in the volume.

• Porowski and Grzegory contibute an article on the high pressure growth of single crystals. No volume on GaN would be complete without an article from this group.

• Perlin, Suski, Leszczynski and Teisseyre follow on the single crystal growth article with a short review of the properties of the crystals.Some properties are intrinsic ones we all need to know; others are not.

• Steve Pearton tells you more than you ever wanted to know about "Hydrogen in GaN". For me, reading the article was like going to a doctor and finding out all the things that could be wrong with me. I know more, but I don't feel better.

• Implantation doping and isolation of GaN is thoroughly covered by John Zolper.

• Randy Shul covers ECR Plasma Etching. If you don't know what ECR stands for, this article is not for you.

• Fan Ren describes contacts on InN and GaN. I was surprised to find so much information on InN and InN contacts to GaAs.

• Shuji Nakamura reviews his work on GaN LED's. There are no revelations hidden here.

• Binari and Dietrich review the field of GaN electronics. This is a very nice article that can be read by both experts and novices.

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• The book's page in the MIJ-NSR Reference Database

last updated November 17, 1997 2:52:25 PM.
© 1997 The Materials Research Society