Spontaneous formation of highly regular superlattice structure in InGaN epilayers grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

In this letter, we have investigated the structural properties of thick InGaN layers grown on GaN by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy, using two growth rates of 1.0 and 3.6 Å/s. A highly regular superlattice (SL) structure is found to be spontaneously formed in the film grown at 3.6 Å/s but not in the film grown at 1.0 Å/s. The faster grown film also exhibits superior structural quality, which could be due to the surface roughness suppression caused by kinetic limitation, and the inhibition of the Frank–Read dislocation generation mechanism within the spontaneously formed SL structure.