Substrate engineering for defect reduction and microstructure control in the growth of indium arsenide on (100) gallium arsenide.

摘要

The development of devices based on InAs, GaSb, and AlSb, semiconductors that possess narrow band-gaps and 0.61 nm lattice parameters, has been limited by the defects that ensue in epitaxial films that typically are grown on commercial semi-insulating, but 7% lattice-mismatched, GaAs substrates. The studies described in this dissertation investigate the application of a lateral epitaxial overgrowth technique for defect reduction and microstructure control to the InAs/GaAs heteroepitaxial system by exploring the development of microstructure at various stages of island and film growth in conventional and lateral overgrowth epitaxy (that is, on unpatterned and mask-patterned substrates, respectively). For a range of growth conditions, InAs films on unpatterned (100) GaAs substrates exhibit not only the threading dislocations characteristic of largely mismatched epitaxial films, but also systematic tilting within micron-scale InAs domains. Alteration of the pattern and magnitude of the tilt achieved by varying the growth conditions and/or introducing mask-patterned substrates suggest that not only chemical and kinetic, but also physical constraints can direct microstructural evolution during growth. Backscattered electron Kikuchi pattern-based orientation imaging was used to investigate the origin of the improved epitaxial alignment that is realized when InAs films were grown on mask-patterned (100) GaAs substrates. The island size at coalescence was shown to be critical in determining whether a single or two-fold, four-fold or six-fold epitaxial orientation relationship(s) is (are) present in the film. The evolution of tilt with increasing island size is attributed to the particulars of the misfit dislocation network that forms, which appears to evolve in this epitaxial system as the island grows, in accordance with a model proposed by Spencer and Tersoff [1,2]. Sub-micron (∼0.5 mum or less) island sizes at coalescence appear to lead to a single orientation aligned with the GaAs.; This work shows that spatial constraints imposed at the early stages of growth, in this case through use of a mask-patterned substrate, can be used to promote coalescence at small island size as an alternative or parallel approach to setting growth conditions (temperature, precursor stoichiometry, etc.) in order to control the defect nucleation and microstructure.; References. [1]. B.J. Spencer, and J. Tersoff, Appl. Phys. Lett. 77 (1997) 2533. [2]. B.J. Spencer, and J. Tersoff, Phys. Rev. B63 (2001) 205424.