Selective Area Epitaxy of GaAs/Ge/Si Nanomembranes: A Morphological Study

We demonstrate the feasibility of growing GaAs nanomembranes on a plastically-relaxed Ge layer deposited on Si (111) by exploiting selective area epitaxy in MBE. Our results are compared to the case of the GaAs homoepitaxy to highlight the criticalities arising by switching to heteroepitaxy. We found that the nanomembranes evolution strongly depends on the chosen growth parameters as well as mask pattern. The selectivity of III-V material with respect to the SiO2 mask can be obtained when the lifetime of Ga adatoms on SiO2 is reduced, so that the diffusion length of adsorbed Ga is high enough to drive the Ga adatoms towards the etched slits. The best condition for a heteroepitaxial selective area epitaxy is obtained using a growth rate equal to 0.3 ML/s of GaAs, with a As BEP pressure of about 2.5 x 10(-6) torr and a temperature of 600 degrees C.