Chapter 6 - Chemical Beam Epitaxy

Abstract

Both molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MO-CVD), also known as metalorganic vapor-phase epitaxy (MO-VPE), have made impressive progress and emerged as two very important and matured techniques for preparing compound semiconductor heterostructures. However, each one by itself has unique advantages and disadvantages and several of these are complementary. Chemical beam epitaxy (CBE), a new development in the epitaxial technology, combines the beam nature of MBE and the use and control of an all-vapor source as in MO-CVD. The process of CBE and its importance can be understood and appreciated by viewing it from the MO-CVD point of view. Tremendous progress in CBE has attracted a great deal of interest from the MO-CVD and MBE communities, because it offers solutions to some of the most difficult problems encountered with each technique. Its potential importance as a desirable epitaxial growth technique is evidenced by the rapid growth in the number of research and development laboratories in the world that have started working on this process in the past couple of years and the availability of commercial systems from major semiconductor equipment manufacturing companies, for example, Varian (United States), Riber ISA (France), VG Semicon (United Kingdom), and Anelva (Japan). After two decades of development in MBE and MO-CVD, CBE represents a new offspring of both and promises to combine the major advantages of its parents. It is in this sense that CBE is hopeful of pushing the capabilities of epitaxial growth techniques beyond those of MBE and MO-CVD.