Growth of III-nitride semiconductors on thin van der Waals buffers for mechanical lift off and transfer

A method comprising:

• growing a van der Waals (vdW) buffer layer of a predetermined material roughness and thickness on a first substrate;
• providing a metal organic precursor material on the vdW buffer layer, wherein a ratio of nitrogen to boron in the metal organic precursor material is greater than approximately 450 to 4800;
• depositing a nucleation layer on the vdW buffer layer;
• and
• growing a semiconductor layer on the nucleation layer,
• wherein the semiconductor layer is characterized by a bonding strength to the first substrate that varies according to the predetermined material roughness and thickness of the vdW buffer layer.

A method comprising:

• depositing a van der Waals (vdW) buffer layer with a selected material roughness and thickness on a substrate, comprising:
• depositing a vdW buffer layer having a RMS roughness value less than 0.1 nm, and
• altering the vdW buffer layer to have a RMS roughness value of approximately 2 nm;
• growing a nucleation layer on the vdW buffer layer by (i) pulsing a metal organic precursor material to the vdW buffer layer to fix a polarity of a surface of the nucleation layer thereby creating a seed layer, and (ii) growing a nucleation material on the seed layer;
• growing a semiconductor structure, wherein the semiconductor is adhered to the substrate, and wherein a bonding strength of the semiconductor structure to the substrate is controlled by the selected material roughness and thickness of the vdW buffer layer;
• and
• releasing the semiconductor structure from the substrate by removing at least a portion of the vdW buffer layer from the substrate.