Kinetic roughness in epitaxy (experimental)

Different regimes of growth morphology are observed for InP films prepared by metal-organic molecular beam epitaxy. Below a well-defined minimum growth temperature Tgmin kinetic roughening is observed. From the temperature dependence of roughening near Tgmin for substrates with different misorientations we estimate a value of 0.4-0.5 eV for the Schwoebel-Erlich step crossing barrier. At growth temperatures higher than Tgmin we observe the formation of localized surface defects associated with vacancies. The density of defects is strongly dependent on the thermodynamic and kinetic growth parameters.