Surfactant-mediated molecular-beam epitaxy of highly-strained III-V semiconductor heterostructures

The epitaxial growth of strained-layer heterostructures (SLHs) is currently under intense investigation, driven by the desire to obtain new physical properties different from those of the individual constituents of the structure. Much work is directed toward controlling the epitaxial morphology, i.e. the growth mode, of strained layers because this eventually governs the properties of SLHs. Surfactant-mediated molecular-beam epitaxy (SM-MBE) is a technique recently developed to face this challenge. We summarize the main results achieved with this approach in the field of III-V SLHs