Status of III-V semiconductor thin films and their applications to future OEICs

In the last decade, semiconductor technology has been advanced to a great extent in terms of electronic and photonic discrete devices. One of the main reasons for such a progress, is the result of advancement in the epitaxial growth techniques such as molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD), where device quality films can be grown with great control over composition, uniformity and thickness. MOCVD has proven to be one of the best growth methods for many IH-V semiconductor thin films ¹. Its flexibility and potential to yield a broad range of growth rates resulted in the layers featuring the thicknesses from tens of microns down to several nanometers. Planar structures containing quantum wells with atomically flat interfaces, superlattices, strained or graded-index layers were successfully grown by MOCVD. Furthermore, MOCVD proved its efficiency in producing a laser devices by overgrowth and epitaxy on patterned substrates. The importance of MOCVD is strongly enhanced by the possibility of large-scale production by simultaneous growth on several substrates in one process. Several III-V semiconductor films with bandgaps ranging from infrared to ultraviolet (15 to 0.2 μm) have been successfully grown by MOCVD.