STM and RHEED studies on low-temperature growth of GaAs(0 0 1)

By using scanning tunneling microscopy and reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED), kinetics during the low temperature (LT) growth of GaAs as well as anomaly in RHEED intensity oscillation (RO) has been studied. At the intermediate temperature in the range of 300–500 °C, the growing surface roughens, while at the still LT, with decreasing the island size, the surface roughening settles down to some extent, which renders reentrant behavior of the RO. In the reentrant LT region, the RO shows temporal frequency shift. Dynamical calculations reproduce the observed features qualitatively, confirming that the anomaly is largely concerned with the multilayered morphology evolved during the growth.