Suppression of Antiphase Disorder in GaAs Grown on Relaxed GeSi Buffers by Metal-Organic Chemical Vapor Deposition

Due to the prohibitively high 4.1% lattice mismatch, direct growth of GaAs on Si invariably leads to very high dislocation densities (> 108/cm2) which have precluded its use in device applications despite numerous attempts. However, the growth of low threading dislocation density (∼2 × 106/cm2) relaxed graded Ge/GexSi1−x/Si heterostructures can bridge the gap between lattice constants by replacing the high mismatch GaAs/Si interface with a low mismatch (< 0.1%) GaAs/Ge interface. Although the lattice mismatch problem is thus eliminated, the heterovalent GaAs/Ge interface remains highly susceptible to antiphase disorder. Since antiphase boundaries (APBs) nucleated at the GaAs/Ge interface act as scattering and nonradiative recombination centers, growth of device quality GaAs on Ge/GexSi1−x/Si demands effective suppression of antiphase disorder. The current work investigates the sublattice location of GaAs on 6° offcut (001) Ge/GexSi1−x/Si substrates as a function of atmospheric pressure metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) growth initiation parameters. Two distinct GaAs phases are observed, one dominant at temperatures > 600°C and another at temperatures <500°C. Incomplete phase transitions during pre-growth thermal cycling account for the appearance of localized bands of anti-phase disorder where the polarity of the GaAs film switches. We suspect that background arsenic levels in the MOCVD system are largely responsible for inducing the observed phase transitions. The complete suppression of antiphase disorder under optimized growth conditions is demonstrated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM)