ABSTRACT
The mechanical stability of commercial GaP/Si templates during thermal annealing and subsequent growth of GaP and AlGaP using metal-organic chemical-vapour deposition is investigated. Although the as-grown GaP layer of the template originally presents an excellent surface morphology, annealing at temperatures between 645 C to 845 C to remove the native oxide prior to growth leads to plastic relaxation, accompanied by a variety of defects, including a dense grid of micro-twins. These micro-twins detrimentally affect GaP and AlGaP layers grown subsequently on the template.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to acknowledge J. Nagle, A. De Rossi, and S. Combrié for their support and fruitful discussions. The authors thankfully acknowledge funding from the CNRS Renatech network and the ANR Labex TEMPOS (ANR-10-EQPX-0050).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A detailed investigation of these claims are presented in Section 2.