Growth of InP on Si substrates by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

The growth of single‐crystal InP films on (100) Si substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is described. Three different buffer layers were grown by gas‐source MBE in order to reduce the density of dislocations created by the 8% InP‐Si lattice mismatch. Double‐crystal x‐ray diffraction revealed that all buffer layers produced large‐area single‐crystal (100) InP films with the InP lattice tilted towards the 〈100〉 Si directions. A buffer layer of four In_x Ga_1−x P/In_y Ga_1−y P strained superlattices produced a specular InP film with an estimated dislocation density of 10⁸–10⁹ cm⁻² and a residual stress of less than 5×10⁻⁴.