RBS and ERDA study of ion beam synthesised amorphous gallium nitride

Amorphous GaN was synthesised by Ga implantation into N-rich PECVD a-SiNx:H films after annealing between 200°C and 500°C. Similar implantation into Si-rich films did not form GaN. X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) demonstrated the presence of GaN bonds in the former, but not the latter, case. Rutherford backscattering (RBS) and Elastic Recoil Detection Analysis (ERDA) demonstrated that implanted Ga substituted for Si in the N-rich films but not in the Si-rich ones. The RBS/ERDA analysis used self-consistent fitting of multiple spectra using the combinatorial optimisation Simulated Annealing algorithm, followed by a determination of the confidence limits on the depth profiles obtained using Bayesian Inference.