Surface reconstruction of zinc-blende GaN

We propose a model of the surface reconstruction for cubic GaN which accounts both for short- and long-range forces. Our analysis shows that short-range covalent contributions to the bond energies cannot by themselves explain the difference in stability of different surface configurations. Our analysis, which includes long-range ionic contributions, shows that at all typical molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) epitaxy temperatures the cubic GaN film with a free-carrier concentration larger than 10(16) cm(-3) should have a tendency to develop the surface reconstruction. The qualitative explanation of the reconstruction effects on Ga surface of (001) surface of cubic GaN can be linked to a large difference in atomic sizes of Ga and N. (C) 1996 American Institute of Physics.