Epitaxial Growth of Gallium Phosphide on Cleaved and Polished (111) Calcium Fluoride

Abstract

The mechanism of growth of GaP on a cleaved CaF₂ (111) surface was studied in situ in a high‐energy reflection electron diffraction system. It was found that in the early stages of growth, GaP forms tetrahedral nuclei with {111} faces. The three edges of the tetrahedron are parallel to the three 〈110〉 directions. These microcrystals coalesce and form a smooth film after a mean thickness of more than 300 monolayers of GaP is deposited on the surface. Temperatures for epitaxial growth of a single crystal without twinning as a function of the atom arrival rate were studied for GaP on a clean CaF₂ surface and on a GaP‐covered CaF₂ surface. It was found that growing <named-content xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:ali="http://www.niso.org/schemas/ali/1.0/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"...