Towards van der Waals Epitaxial Growth of GaAs on Si using a Graphene Buffer Layer |
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| Authors: | Yazeed Alaskar Shamsul Arafin Darshana Wickramaratne Mark A Zurbuchen Liang He Jeff McKay Qiyin Lin Mark S Goorsky Roger K Lake Kang L Wang |
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| Affiliation: | 1. Department of Electrical Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, CA, USA;2. National Nanotechnology Research Center, King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia;3. Laboratory for Terahertz and Terascale Electronics, University of California at Riverside, CA, USA;4. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of California at Los Angeles, CA, USA;5. California NanoSystems Institute, University of California at Los Angeles, CA, USA;6. Laboratory for Electron and X‐ray Instrumentation, University of California at Irvine, CA, USA |
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| Abstract: | Van der Waals growth of GaAs on silicon using a two‐dimensional layered material, graphene, as a lattice mismatch/thermal expansion coefficient mismatch relieving buffer layer is presented. Two‐dimensional growth of GaAs thin films on graphene is a potential route towards heteroepitaxial integration of GaAs on silicon in the developing field of silicon photonics. Hetero‐layered GaAs is deposited by molecular beam epitaxy on graphene/silicon at growth temperatures ranging from 350 °C to 600 °C under a constant arsenic flux. Samples are characterized by plan‐view scanning electron microscopy, atomic force microscopy, Raman microscopy, and X‐ray diffraction. The low energy of the graphene surface and the GaAs/graphene interface is overcome through an optimized growth technique to obtain an atomically smooth low temperature GaAs nucleation layer. However, the low adsorption and migration energies of gallium and arsenic atoms on graphene result in cluster‐growth mode during crystallization of GaAs films at an elevated temperature. In this paper, we present the first example of an ultrasmooth morphology for GaAs films with a strong (111) oriented fiber‐texture on graphene/silicon using quasi van der Waals epitaxy, making it a remarkable step towards an eventual demonstration of the epitaxial growth of GaAs by this approach for heterogeneous integration. |
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| Keywords: | heteroepitaxial integration GaAs on silicon graphene quasi van der Waals epitaxy thin films |
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