Room-Temperature Growth of UV-Emitting Dendritic GaN Fractal Nanostructures Using Photochemical Vapor Deposition

A dendritic gallium nitride (GaN) structure was grown at room temperature using photochemical vapor deposition with trimethylgallium and ammonia as the source materials. The sample was investigated by a scanning electron microscope and photoluminescence (PL). Its morphology was evaluated using fractal analysis. The surface morphology of the deposited film had dendritic nanostructures similar in morphology to the diffusion-limited aggregation. Dendritic GaN had a strong PL spectrum with a peak energy of 3.55 eV at 5 K, indicating the quantum size effect. Using the box-counting method, the fractal dimension of the dendritic GaN nanostructure was calculated to be approximately 1.7.