We have investigated ordering behaviour in MOVPE-grown GaInAsP lattice-matc
hed to GaAs using luminescence and diffraction methods. Our observations in
dicate that the occurrence of ordering variants depends not only on the gro
wth conditions and the layer composition but is also extremely sensitive to
very small substrate misorientation from (0 0 1). For GaInAsP alloys with
low arsenic content (y similar to 0.15) the ordering behaviour is very simi
lar to that in the well-studied (In,Ga)P system. Polarization dependent PL
reveals that in comparison to InGaP, the degree of ordering in the quaterna
ry gets weaker with rising arsenic content. For higher arsenic content (y g
reater than or equal to 0.5) weak ordering is detected only for layers with
y approximate to 0.7 when grown with a high V/III ratio in the gas phase.
The observed valence-band splittings were approximate to 12 meV for y = 0.1
5 and 8 meV for y = 0.7, respectively. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All r
ights reserved.