Aluminum Nitride – From Crystal Growth to Device Development

Dear Colleagues,

Aluminum nitride (AlN) is an ideal material for a wide range of high-power and high-frequency applications (e.g., UV emitters and UV sensors in the wavelength range well below 200 nm, and for piezoelectric and temperature sensing at high temperatures) due to its outstanding electronic, mechanical and chemical properties (resistivity 10⁷–10¹³ Wcm, band gap 6.2 eV, thermal conductivity 340 Wm^-1K^-1, thermal decomposition > 2400 °C, Mohs hardness 9).

The development of AlN technology is driven by a vital interest in higher energy efficiency, reduction of emissions from combustion engines, diagnostic capabilities in medicine and in the classical field of broadband communications.

To date, most applications of AlN have been based on the deposition of layers of nitride semiconductors by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on foreign substrates such as sapphire.
The use of AlN native substrates would bring dramatically better performance of the corresponding devices because of the reduction in defect density by orders of magnitude. The only known method to fabricate industrially relevant AlN single crystals is the PVT (sublimation/reconstruction) method at temperatures greater than 2000 °C. The associated problems, such as nucleation on native substrates, grain expansion, wafering or n-doping, are still the subject of intensive investigations.

Industrially, AlN wafers are available in very small quantities up to diameters of 2".

Dr. Jürgen Wollweber
Prof. Dr. Liang Wu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• Aluminum nitride
• AlN
• single crystals
• crystal growth
• PVT
• sublimation
• wafer
• MOCVD
• native substrate
• sapphire
• device