Influence of Substrate Misorientation on Facet Formation in Selective Area Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Abstract

AbstractWe have investigated the influence of substrate misorientation on facet formation in selective area metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) on GaAs (001) vicinal substrates. Macroscopic steps several hundred angstroms high were generated on the epitaxial layer over triangular voids where the voids were formed using the conditions of the reverse–mesa–shaped facets. AFM observations revealed that the macroscopic steps were formed by the combined effects of the growth rate enhancement and the development of the exact (001) crystallographic surface. Through removing the growth rate enhancement effect from the experiment results, it could be expected that the exact (001) surface developed only on the side for which the (001) surface was exposed because the surface energy of a low index plane was lower than that of a misoriented high index plane.