Surface morphology and strain relaxation of InAlAs buffer layers grown lattice mismatched on GaAs with inverse steps

In this work, MBE growth of lattice-relaxed InAlAs graded buffer layers on GaAs substrates has been studied. A simple method has been developed to optimize indium content decrease in inverse step buffer layers to generate totally relaxed metamorphic layers. The dependence of strain relaxation on the composition profile of the graded buffer is shown. q2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.