MBE GROWTH PHYSICS - APPLICATION TO DEVICE TECHNOLOGY

We present in this review a consistent picture of the current status o f epitaxial growth physics, as related to molecular beam epitaxy. Afte r a short introduction in the field we describe the different growth m odes and the attributed theoretical models. Among the simulation metho ds used presently to describe the different growth modes, we selected the Monte-Carlo simulation for a more detailed example. The experiment al part of the paper is divided in to two main sections of lattice-mat ched and lattice-mismatched systems. In the first part, we concentrate on the growth mechanisms on nominally oriented substrates and substra tes with vicinal surfaces, which includes the description of the growt h of tilted and serpentine superlattices. In the second part we discus s the concept of the critical layer thickness together with island for mation and strain-induced effects. Besides these two main topics we re port on the application of surface-active species, which provide a new avenue to achieve high-quality man-made microstructures against therm odynamic odds. Within this context self-organisation of epitaxial depo sits is discussed. Finally, we describe material-related growth peculi arities, which are usually connected with a specific property of the c onstituent element, like volatility or extraordinary chemical reactivi ty. We briefly present the currently known growth characteristics for IV-IV heterostructures, wide-gap III-V and narrow-gap II-VI compounds.