Mechanism of preferential nucleation of [1103]- Oriented GaN twins on an SiO₂-patterned m-plane sapphire substrate

The mechanism of preferential nucleation of [1103]-oriented GaN faceted twins on an SiO2-patterned m-plane sapphire substrate was investigated. Each variant of twins, which were enclosed by c- and m-facets, was observed to be preferentially nucleated over the opposite sides of an SiO₂ pattern. It was hypothesized, from the fact that the same method of Legendre transformation is applied to a Wulff plot and a kinetic Wulff plot to determine the growth morphology of a crystalline domain, that the effective surface energy of c- and m-facets would be proportional to the growth rate of the respective facet. On the basis of this hypothesis, minimization of the effective surface energy of a nucleated domain was proposed as a mechanism of preferential nucleation. This proposed mechanism successfully explained the preferential nucleation behaviour.