INSTABILITY OF III-V COMPOUND SURFACES DUE TO LIQUID-PHASE FORMATION

This paper presents the results of calculating the thermodynamic bound ary for III-V compound (phosphides and arsenides) surface instability caused by liquid phase formation. Comparison with experiment shows tha t only for GaAs does the instability boundary coincide with the transi tion between group V and group III stabilized surface reconstruction. In addition, we predict an unusual behavior of the instability boundar y when equilibrium vapor fluxes at the congruent sublimation temperatu re are much higher than the growth rate. For normal growth rates, this behavior should be observable in AlAs and AlP.