Interactions of dislocations and antiphase (inversion) domain boundaries in III–V/IV heteroepitaxy

The potential for interactions of misfit strain relieving dislocations with inversion-type antiphase domain boundaries is considered for III–V on group IV growth. The specific cases of GaAs grown on Si (001) and vicinal (001) substrates are examined. It is shown that threading dislocation densities for these growths should be unacceptably high due to obstruction of threading dislocation motion by the antiphase domain boundaries, even when the boundaries are eliminated shortly after the inception of GaAs layer growth. Cutting of the antiphase domain boundaries by mobile dislocations would require creation of new highenergy surface area. It is suggested that more successful routes would be growth of a strain-relieving buffer or growth on a {hhk} surface.