Ingaasp Solid Solutions: Phase Diagrams, Growth From the Melt on Gaas Substrates, Elastically Strained Epitaxial Layers

Mismatched heteroepitaxy is a special type of epitaxy for semiconducting solid solutions that has recently become very popular. Investigations of this type of epitaxy have progressed in two directions: 1) the preparation of practically strain-free junctions in order to accommodate layers and substrates with different lattice parameters and 2) preparation of strained (pseudomorphic) layers [1]. Strained layers with elastic strain “frozen” into them possess novel properties that are not found in strain-free layers. Their availability increases the variety of materials at our disposition [2]. If the structure of the layers is perfect enough, new practical properties may be utilized in conjunction with, for example, modification of the heterojunction band structure or the creation in InGaAs(111) layers of an intrinsic piezoelectric field [3].