TOWARDS UNDERSTANDING THE GROWTH-MECHANISM OF III-V SEMICONDUCTORS ON AN ATOMIC SCALE

The current understanding of mechanisms of epitaxial growth for III-V compound semiconductors is reviewed. To give a more complete understanding of the growth, the mechanisms for both vapor and solution growth are discussed, where MBE and LPE are taken respectively as their representatives. The transport of the growth species from the sources to the growth point, such as a kink of a growth step, is divided into several stages. The first is the transport in the bulk phase to the growth surface, and the second is the surface diffusion to the step. It is shown that in MBE surface diffusion is the rate limiting process for growth while bulk diffusion directly to the growth step plays a major role in solution growth. Nucleation, surface diffusion and the degree of equilibrium at the step edge in MBE and the interface supersaturation and the formation of macrostep in solution growth are discussed.