InGaAs heteroepitaxy on GaAs compliant substrates: X-ray diffraction evidence of enhanced relaxation and improved structural quality

In0.44Ga0.56As (3% mismatch) films 3 mu m thick were grown simultaneously on a conventional GaAs substrate, glass-bonded GaAs compliant substrates employing glasses of different viscosity, and a twist-bonded GaAs compliant substrate. High-resolution triple-crystal x-ray diffraction measurements of the breadth of the strain distribution in the films and atomic force microscopy measurements of the film's surface morphology were performed. The films grown on the glass-bonded compliant substrates exhibited a strain distribution whose breadth was narrowed by almost a factor of 2 and a surface roughness that decreased by a factor of 4 compared to the film simultaneously grown on the conventional substrate. These improvements in the film's structural quality were observed to be independent of the viscosity of the glass-bonding media over the range of viscosity investigated and were not observed to occur for the film grown on the twist-bonded substrate. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0003-6951(99)01637-X].