The effects of the surfactant antimony on ordering and phase separation in gallium-indium-phosphide grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy

A powerful method for controlling the surface structure during epitaxial growth using surfactants has recently emerged. This work presents the use of the surfactant Sb, which is isoelectronic with P, on the properties of GaInP grown by organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE). Ordering and phase separation in GaInP are of particular interest. The surfactant Sb is found to significantly affect the microscopic arrangement of Ga and In atoms in the bulk solid by effecting a change in the surface structure.; Addition of triethylantimony (TESb) in the vapor is found to result in disordering for GaInP layers grown using conditions that would otherwise produce highly CuPt ordered materials. In-situ surface photoabsorption analysis (SPA) indicates that Sb causes disordering due to a replacement of the [1¯10] P dimers on the singular (001) surface by larger Sb dimers, which reduces the strain-induced driving force for CuPt ordering at the surface. For high Sb concentrations in the vapor, a triple-period ordered structure is formed.; The ability to modulate the bandgap energy using surfactant Sb suggests a simple technique for the production of heterostructures and more elaborate multilayered structures. Modulation of the TESb flow has been used to produce disordered-on-ordered-on-disordered (D/O/D) double heterostructures, with a bandgap energy difference of 135 meV, and quantum wells with well layers as thin as 7.0 nm. Interruptions in the growth cycle are required to produce sharp interfaces. The SPA is used to study the transients involved during addition and removal of Sb from the surface. A simple Langmuir model is used to interpret the transients.; Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images indicate that the GaInP layers grown with high TESb concentrations have a lateral compositional modulation in the [110] direction. The layers with compositional modulation show a decrease in the low temperature photoluminescence (PL) peak energy. The low temperature PL emission is broad and highly polarized. Surface undulation is clearly seen in AFM images. In addition, compositional modulation and surface undulation are found to be significantly enhanced with decreasing growth rate. The mechanism for compositional modulation appears to be kinetically limited.