Congruent evaporation temperature of molecular beam epitaxy grown GaAs (001) determined by local droplet etching

Heyn, Ch. and Jesson, D. E. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0897-1445 2015. Congruent evaporation temperature of molecular beam epitaxy grown GaAs (001) determined by local droplet etching. Applied Physics Letters 107 (16) , 161601. 10.1063/1.4934218

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Abstract

The congruent evaporation temperature Tc of GaAs (001) is critical for many technological processes and is fundamental to the control and stability of Ga droplets for quantum structure fabrication. We apply the technique of local droplet etching (LDE) to measure Tc for technologically important molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) grown GaAs (001). Below Tc, Ga droplets deposited on the surface shrink and form nanoholes via LDE and thermal widening. Above Tc, droplets grow by capturing excess Ga. From the transition between both regimes, we determine Tc = 680 ± 10 °C. Additionally, we find that the nanohole/droplet densities follow an Arrhenius-type temperature dependence with an activation energy of 1.31 eV. The method probes the stability of pre-existing droplets formed by deposition and so avoids the complication of nucleation barriers and readily allows the measurement of Tc for technologically important planar GaAs surfaces in any standard MBE system. The authors thank S. Schnüll for MBE growth and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft for financial support via HA 2042/6-1. D.E.J. acknowledges the support from a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Physics and Astronomy
Subjects:	Q Science > QB Astronomy Q Science > QC Physics
Publisher:	AIP Publishing
ISSN:	0003-6951
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	30 March 2016
Date of Acceptance:	7 October 2015
Last Modified:	05 May 2023 18:56
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/83892

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