Photo-Assisted Chemical Beam Epitaxy of II-VI Semiconductors

Photo-assisted epitaxy is a versatile growth technique which allows in situ modification of surface chemical reactions. Under appropriate growth conditions the surface stoichiometry can be tuned by selectively desorbing surface species, or by decomposing particular molecular species, or by affecting the reaction rate constant of a chemical process. A potential application of laser-assisted growth rate enhancement or growth rate retardation is in the area of maskless selective area epitaxy. We have investigated the effect of photons on the growth of ZnSe by solid and gaseous source molecular beam epitaxy using various combination of sources. Significant growth rate enhancement (up to 20x), as well as growth rate suppression (as much as 70%), have been observed depending on the sources employed. In all cases, the laser power density remained low (∼200 mW/cm2), and the creation of photo-generated carriers was found to be required. An electron beam incident to the surface has a similar effect and increased the growth rate.