Anisotropic Lattice Relaxation and its Mechanism of ZnSe Epilayer Grown on (001) GaAs Substrate by Molecular Beam Epitaxy

Abstract

We have investigated anisotropic lattice relaxation and its mechanism of ZnSe epitaxial layer grown on (001) GaAs substrate by MBE. Double-crystal X-ray rocking curves for (004), {115} and {404} reflections were measured as a function of the azimuthal rotation angle of the sample. We observed the sinusoidal oscillation of the FWHM of the epilayer peak for (004) reflections due to the asymmetric dislocation density along two orthogonal <110> directions, and the direction of the maximum FWHM corresponding to high dislocation density is along [110]. In addition, the strain along [110] is smaller than that along [1-10], indicating that the layer suffered anisotropic lattice relaxation. The direction of larger relaxation([l-10]) is not consistent with that of high dislocation density([110]). The results suggest that the asymmetry in dislocation density is not responsible for the anisotropic relaxation of the ZnSe epilayer.