Lattice misfit and relative tilt of lattice planes in semiconductor heterostructures

Abstract

High resolution x-ray diffraction has been used to investigate the relative tilt between epilayer and substrate lattice planes of different semiconductor heterostructures. All epilayers were grown on (001) GaAs substrates misoriented by 2-degrees towards the next [011] direction. Results on the amount of the relative tilt and the direction of the maximum relative tilt are presented. We find that for heterostructures with small misfit (f < 0.001) the direction of relative tilt coincides with the direction defined by the miscut substrate. In heterostructures with large misfit (f > 0.05) an angle of about 90-degrees between the direction of maximum relative tilt and the direction of the miscut substrate has been observed.