Material properties and performance of metamorphic optoelectronic integrated circuits grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs substratesA technique for the heteroepitaxy of GaAs/Si films having reduced threading dislocation density is presented. The important attribute of this technique is the suppression of three-dimensional Volmer-Weber island formation during initial deposition. This suppression is achieved by deposition of a stoichiometric GaAs buffer layer by a migration-enhanced epitaxy technique on silicon at 348 K to a thickness greater than the ''monolithic thickness,'' h m . Subsequent GaAs films deposited by conventional molecular beam epitaxy on buffer layers of thickness greater than h m possess structural and optical characteristics that exceed those for state-of-the-art GaAs/Si layers: an x-ray full width at half maximum ͑FWHM͒ of 110 arcsec with a dislocation density at the film surface of 3ϫ10 6 cm Ϫ2 and a concomitant 4 K photoluminescence FWHM of 2.1 meV. The p-i-n structures suitable for use as light-emitting diodes ͑LEDs͒ that were grown on the reduced threading dislocation density GaAs/Si and by means of forward-and reverse-bias measurements, demonstrated an ideality factor of nϭ1.5, an increased reverse-bias breakdown electric field of 2.1ϫ10 7 V/m, and an intrinsic region resistivity of 4ϫ10 7 ⍀ cm for LEDs of increasingly smaller mesa size.

Previously reported growth of SiC films on SiC by chemical vapor deposition (CVD) used Acheson and Lely α-SiC crystal substrates. We report the CVD growth and evaluation of high quality 6H-SiC films on 6H-SiC wafers cut from large boules grown by the modified-sublimation process. The single-crystal 6H-SiC films were grown on wafers oriented 3° to 4° off the (0001) plane toward the 〈112̄0〉 direction. The films, up to 12 μm thick, had surfaces that were smooth and featureless. The high quality of the films was demonstrated by optical and electron microscopy, and low-temperature photoluminescence.

Previously reported chemical vapor deposition of 3C-SiC on 6H-SiC has resulted in films with a high density of double positioning boundaries (DPBs). We have found that growth on as-grown faces of 6H-SiC crystals can yield films that are largely free of DPBs. The (111) 3C-SiC films, up to 12 μm thick, were evaluated by optical and electron microscopy and low-temperature photoluminescence (LTPL). The LTPL spectra of the films were similar to those of high quality Lely-grown 3C-SiC.

We report the growth of high-quality As-based ternary and quaternary alloys lattice matched to InP using a valved arsenic source that can post-heat the As beam after evaporation. We find that the optimum group-V-to-group-III beam-equivalent pressure ratio for growth of (In,Ga)As alloys using this source is considerably lower than values reported previously for growth using conventional As4 sources. Consequently, high-quality (In,Ga)As, (In,Al)As, and (In,Al,Ga)As alloys (and quantum wells made from these alloys) can be grown under the same growth conditions, i.e., substrate temperatures between about 525 °C and 540 °C and V/III pressure ratios between 10:1 and 15:1. Thick-film alloys and multiple-quantum-well structures grown under these conditions show superior structural and optical quality. Strong excitonic features are observed in the room-temperature absorption spectra of a number of multiple-quantum-well structures with well widths ranging from 30 Å to 170 Å . Calculations of the exciton transition energies using a simple empirical two-band model are in excellent agreement with experiment, even for a structure containing quantum wells in tensile strain in which the ordering of ground-state light- and heavy-hole excitons is reversed. The optical absorption spectrum of a 50-Å -period (In,Ga)As/(In,Al)As superlattice shows room-temperature excitons involving electronic states at both the bottom and top of the minibands. Exciton line widths for these quantum-well structures, measured using low-temperature photoluminescence, are consistent with the limits imposed by random alloy fluctuations. We tentatively explain the lower optimum V/III pressure ratio for growth of (In,Ga)As in terms of the increase in kinetic energy of As4 molecules (compared with the kinetic energy of molecules from a conventional As4 source) and the consequent enhancement in the efficiency of dissociation of As4 molecules into As2 molecules at the growing surface.

The growth of reduced dislocation density GaAs/Si is performed by a novel two-step technique where the first epitaxy step takes place at 75° C and the second is performed at 580° C. The initial deposition is single crystal, continuous, and planar such that there is no contribution to the dislocation density from Volmer-Weber island coalescence and no trapping of dislocations in pinholes. Using this new growth technique, a reduced dislocation density the order of 106/cm2 was obtained. The improved crystallinity is indicated by the more narrow x-ray full-width-at-half-maximum (FWHM) value of 110 arcseconds. GaAs p-i-n diodes were grown on the reduced dislocation density GaAs/Si and it was found that the resistivity of the intrinsic region for the heteroepitaxial diodes was similar to homoepitaxial ones for small mesa sizes.