Plasma-excited MBE—proposal and achievements through R&D of compound semiconductor materials and devices

Abstract

Abstract This paper reviews the 35 years of history of plasma-excited MBE, focusing on the special value added to conventional MBE through the usage of plasma-excited molecular beams. These advantages include low-temperature surface cleaning, low-temperature growth, selective-area regrowth and impurity doping. These technologies are extremely important to realizing nanoscale low-dimensional device structures. True band gap of InN was identified only after high-quality InN became available by using plasma-excited MBE. Future prospects of this technology are also included from the device application viewpoint.