Speaker
Description
Over the last ~50 years, semiconductor epitaxy has shaped our high-tech society. While several epitaxial growth technologies have been successfully used for decades, few have been utilised industrially and are implemented for large-scale, high-volume applications. Metalorganic Vapor Phase Epitaxy (MOVPE) is one of these well-established technologies, underpinning the majority of III-V semiconductor device fabrication (especially in photonics), and underlying key developments not only for III-Vs, but also III-Ns for lighting and power solutions.
Despite the broad technological use of MOVPE, there still persist a large number of fundamental unresolved issues. These are tightly tied to a lack of understanding of the complexity of the epitaxial process and dynamics, and, as a result, are effectively limiting a broad range of further device developments.
Here we will discuss ~ 20 years of research and related results which importantly contributed to establish the current understanding, starting from highlighting the relevance of metalorganic precursors for growth on planar and patterned substrates [1, 2].
We will highlight the surprising “zoology” of the reported surface organization and underline the need for proper theoretical modelling, including describing unexpected surface organization paths, such as Volmer-Weber dot formation at the lattice matched InP/AlInAs interface [3].
We will also present novel results on surfactant physics, including presenting clear evidence that one of the main device design limiting factors in today’s MOVPE processes (i.e. Zn diffusion complicating P-I-N device stacking) actually is not often linked to “crystallographic” diffusion but indeed induced by surfactant effects [4].
Figure 1. Representative examples from [3] (AFM) of Volmer-Weber physics in the lattice matched InP/AlInAs system. Panels c,d are obtained with different InP coverage. In lower panels a larger area was scanned
[1] A. L.-S. Chua, E. Pelucchi, A. Rudra, B. Dwir, and E. Kapon, A. Zangwill, D. D. Vvedensky, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2008, 92, 013117.
[2] V. Dimastrodonato, E. Pelucchi, and D. D. Vvedensky, Phys. Rev. Lett. 2012, 108, 256102.
[3] Agnieszka Gocalinska, Marina Manganaro, Gediminas Juska, Valeria Dimastrodonato, Kevin Thomas, Bruce A. Joyce, Jing Zhang, Dimitri D. Vvedensky, and Emanuele Pelucchi, Appl. Phys. Lett. 2014, 104, 141606.
[4] A. Ozcan-Atar, A. Gocalinska, P.P. Michalowski and E. Pelucchi, Compound Semiconductor week, CSW-2021 online conference, 2021, May 9-13,