Liquid phase epitaxy

Liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) is a method to grow semiconductor crystal layers from the melt on solid substrates. This happens at temperatures well below the melting point of the deposited semiconductor. The semiconductor is dissolved in the melt of another material. At conditions that are close to the equilibrium between dissolution and deposition the deposition of the semiconductor crystal on the substrate is slow and uniform. Typical deposition rates for monocrystalline films range from 0.1 to 1 μm/minute. The equilibrium conditions depend very much on the temperature and on the concentration of the dissolved semiconductor in the melt. The growth of the layer from the liquid phase can be controlled by a forced cooling of the melt. Impurity introduction can be strongly reduced. Doping can be achieved by the addition of dopants. The method is mainly used for the growth of compound semiconductors. Very thin, uniform and high quality layers can be produced. A typical example for the liquid phase epitaxy method is the growth of ternery and quarternery III-V compounds on gallium arsenide (GaAs) substrates. As a solvent quite often gallium is used in this case. Another frequently used substrate is indium phosphide (InP). However also other substrates like glass or ceramic can be applied for special applications. To facilitate nucleation, and to avoid tension in the grown layer the thermal expansion coefficient of substrate and grown layer should be similar.

Further information:

1. Палатник Л. С, Папиров И. И., Ориентированная кристаллизация, М., 1964; их же, Эпитаксиальные пленки, М., 1971; Современная кристаллография, т. 3, М., 1980
2. A. Polman et. al., J. Appl. Phys., Vol. 75, No. 6, 15 March 1994
3. S. Mirabella et. al., Appl. Phys. Lett. 86, 2005
4. Jaeger, Richard C. (2002). "Film Deposition". Introduction to Microelectronic Fabrication. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall
5. Article Liquid phase epitaxy from Wikipedia, the Free Enciclopedia. Available under the license Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike.

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