Nanopipes and inversion domains in high quality GaN epitaxial layers

In this paper we report that, in addition to dislocations, two other types of defects are observed in high quality GaN thin films. These defects have a filamentary nature, are oriented along the < 0001 > direction. and may not be easily distinguished from the pure dislocations. Using a combination of conventional electron microscopy with convergent beam electron diffraction techniques we show that one of these types of dislocations consist of nanopipes, which are coreless dislocations with Burgers vectors < 0001 >. The other type of observed defects consist of inversion domains with [<000(1)over bar>] orientation within the [0001] matrix. The origin of the inversion domains and nanopipes is discussed.