Characterization of thin Ag films deposited onto InP(001)-p(2 × 4) surface at room temperature by means of LEED, RHEED, AES and RBS-channeling techniques

Ag films of different thickness deposited onto an InP(001)-p(2 × 4) surface at room temperature have been characterized in-situ by means of LEED, RHEED, AES and RBS-channeling techniques. It is found that the LEED patterns for the Ag surfaces show faint p(1 × 1) spots at an areal density of 4.8 × 1015/cm2 (average thickness of 5.1 Å) and no spots at larger thickness. It is also found that the RHEED patterns show a superposition of transmission diffraction spots for the (110) and (100) faces of the Ag crystal and the transposition between the brightness of the (1, 0) and (−1, 0) spots for both faces takes place when the incidence direction of the electron beam along the direction of the 4-times superlattice is switched to that of the 2-times superlattice of the InP(001)-p(2 × 4) surface. These observations indicate that the Ag film grows in the Stranski-Krastanov mode along the 〈110〉 direction and the islands of Ag(110) crystallites prefer to orient their (100) side surface along the direction of the 4-times superlattice.