Effect of Substrate-Surface Orientation on the N Incorporation in GaAsN Films on GaAs Grown by MOVPE

Abstract

The GaAs1-xNx alloy semiconductor has been grown on GaAs (001), (111)A and (011) substrates by metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy. High resolution X-ray diffraction and Raman scattering were employed to examine the effective N content and the growth rate, as a function of the substrate-surface orientation. The growth rate, which was assessed though the clear Pendellösung fringes, and the N content were found to change dramatically with the substrate-surface orientations. The N content was determined in the order (111)A > (001) > (011). While, the growth rate is in the order, (001) > (011) > (111)A. The effect of substrate-surface orientation on the N incorporation found in the present study is interpreted in terms of the difference in the growth rate on each surface orientation and the number of dangling bonds with which the N atoms can be trapped on the growing surface. Our results show that controlled nitrogen incorporating for GaAsN is successfully achieved and can be applied to the fabrication of some novel structures such as a spontaneous N content modulated structure, which is applicable to high performance long wavelength laser diodes.