Investigation of OP-GaP Grown on OP-GaAs Templates Using Nondestructive Reciprocal Space Mapping

Abstract

Orientation-patterned gallium phosphide (OP-GaP) has been grown heteroepitaxially on OP gallium arsenide (GaAs) templates using hydride vapor phase epitaxy (HVPE). The effect of OP-GaAs template fabrication methods of epitaxial-inversion and wafer bonding on the heteroepitaxial OP-GaP growth has been investigated. OP-GaP layers with a growth rate of up to 35 µm/h and excellent domain fidelity were obtained. The growth rate and the domain fidelity have been revealed/studied by scanning electron microscope (SEM). In addition, we demonstrate that the crystalline quality of the individual domains, namely, the substrate-oriented domains (ODs) and the inverted domains (IDs), can be investigated by high-resolution x-ray diffraction reciprocal space mapping (HRXRDRSM), which can also indicate the domain fidelity. Attempts to increase the growth rate and improve the domain fidelity by increasing the III and V group precursors resulted in either an increase in the growth rate in the OP-GaP layers grown on epitaxial inversion OP-GaAs template at the expense of the domain crystalline quality and fidelity or an improvement in the crystalline quality of the domains at the expense of the growth rate in the OP-GaP layers grown on wafer-bonded OP-GaAs templates. In the case of OP-GaP grown on OP-GaAs templates prepared by epitaxial inversion, the crystalline quality of the ODs is better than that of the IDs, but it shows that the quality of the inverted layer in the template influences the quality and fidelity of the grown domains. To the authors’ knowledge, exploitation of HRXRDRSM studies on OP-GaP to establish the crystalline quality of its individual domains (ODs and IDs) is the first of its kind. OP-ZnSe grown on OP-GaAs templates has also been included in this study to further emphasize the potential of this method. We propose from this study that once the growth rate is optimized from SEM studies, HRXRDRSM analysis alone can be used to assess the structural quality and to infer the domain fidelity of the OP structures.