X-ray diffraction micro-imaging of strain in laterally overgrown GaAs layers. Part II: analysis of multi-stripe and fully overgrown layers

Abstract

As a development of our previous analysis of a single GaAs stripe, in this work spatially resolved X-ray diffraction (SRXRD) was applied for micro-imaging of strain in partially and fully overgrown GaAs layers grown by epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) on SiO2-masked GaAs substrates. We show that a standard X-ray diffraction providing information integrated over many stripes leads to overestimation of lattice misorientation in such samples. On the contrary, the SRXRD allows precise measurements of local wing tilts of individual ELO stripes with micrometer-scale spatial resolution. A complex strain field was found in fully overgrown GaAs ELO samples. With the use of the SRXRD technique, the distribution of this strain was measured that allowed reproducing the shape of deformed lattice planes both inside the epitaxial layer as well as in the substrate underneath.