Organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE)

Abstract

Abstract Organometallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE) has emerged in this past decade as a flexible and powerful epitaxial materials synthesis technology for a wide range of compound–semiconductor materials and devices. Despite its capabilities and rapidly growing importance, OMVPE is far from being well understood: it is exceedingly complex, involving the chemically reacting flow of mixtures of organometallic, hydride and carrier-gas precursors. Recently, however, OMVPE technologies based on high-speed rotating disk reactors (RDRs) have become increasingly common. As fluid flow in these reactors is typically cylindrically symmetric and laminar, its effect on the overall epitaxial growth process is beginning to be unraveled through quantitative computer models. In addition, over the past several years, a combination of well-controlled surface science and RDR-based growth-rate measurements has led to a richer understanding of some of the critical gas and surface chemistry mechanisms underlying OMVPE. As a consequence, it is becoming increasingly possible to develop a quantitative and physically based understanding of OMVPE in particular chemical systems. In this article, we review this understanding for the important specific case of AlGaAs OMVPE in an RDR under conditions used for growing typical device heterostructures. Our goal is to use typical growth conditions as a starting point for a discussion of fundamental physical and chemical phenomena, beginning with the fluid flow through an RDR and ending with the chemical reactions on the surface. By focusing on one particularly important yet relatively simple specific case, this review differs from more comprehensive previous reviews. Viewed as a case study, though, it complements these previous reviews by illustrating the wide diversity of research that is related to OMVPE. It can also serve as a good starting point for the development and transfer of insights into other more complex cases, such as: OMVPE of materials families containing Sb, P or N species, of other devices types, and in other more complex reactor geometries.