GROWTH OF GALLIUM-ARSENIDE ON HYDROGEN PASSIVATED SI WITH LOW-TEMPERATURE TREATMENT (APPROXIMATELY-600-DEGREES-C)

Epitaxial growth of GaAs on Si commonly employs a high-temperature (> 850-degrees-C) oxide desorption step. In this letter, we report the first epitaxial growth of GaAs on Si without the need for this high-temperature treatment. This method utilizes a final HF treatment whereby the Si surface dangling bonds are terminated by hydrogen with a resultant (1 X 1) bulk-like surface structure. Upon medium temperature heat treatment (congruent-to 500-degrees-C), hydrogen leaves the surface leading to the common orthogonal 2 X 1 surface reconstruction. High quality GaAs epitaxial layers were successfully grown on these 2 X 1 reconstructed Si surfaces with the pregrowth substrate preparation temperatures of as low as 600-degrees-C.