Preparation and Patterning of GaSb Surfaces with Br-IBAE for Antimonide Based Molecular Beam Epitaxy

ABSTRACTBromine Ion Beam Assisted Etching (Br-IBAE) is shown to be useful in removing GaSb wafer chemical mechanical polish (CMP) surface and subsurface damage; creating microstructure patterns in GaSb surfaces through stencil, photoresist, and oxides masks; and stabilizing the as-etched GaSb surface with a thin, easily thermally desorbed oxide layer. Thus, the Br-IBAE technique is well suited as a GaSb surface final-polish technique in overgrowth applications that require “epi-ready” GaSb (100) surfaces for molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) as well as applications such as quantum wires and dots that require high-quality GaSb/AlInGaSb MBE overgrowth over patterned GaSb (100) surfaces.