Mechanism of formation of the misfit dislocations at the cubic materials interfaces

Abstract

High-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy and molecular dynamic simulation are applied to study the misfit dislocations at the GaSb/GaAs interface. In the investigated samples, three types of misfit dislocations have been observed: shuffle and glide set Lomer dislocations and 60° dislocation pairs. The dislocation density tensor analysis is next used to quantify the Burgers vector of misfit dislocations and investigate the misfit dislocation formation mechanism. This work demonstrates that, in these hetero-structures, the dominant mechanism underlying the formation of misfit dislocations is the glide and reaction of 60° dislocations. It is shown that the final structure of each misfit dislocation depends on the Burgers vectors of the initial 60° dislocations. Finally, this analysis points out an approach to determine the local rotation at interface due to mixed type dislocations.