Thin GaAs compliant substrates have been developed in order to reduce the s
train in lattice-mismatched layers during epitaxial overgrowth. Using OMVPE
a variety of (30-80 Angstrom) thin GaAs layers were grown and successfully
fused at 660 degrees C on a host GaAs substrate with twist-angles between
10 degrees and 45 degrees. The resulting compliant substrates were overgrow
n with up to 3.6% lattice-mismatched and 1200 nm thick InGaAs layers. Nomar
ski phase contrast microscopy, photoluminescence and x-ray diffraction (XRD
) were used to characterize the heteroepitaxial layers. The smooth and cros
s-hatch free morphology and the reduced DXRD peakwidth of the heteroepitaxi
al layers indicate a substantial improvement of the quality of heteroepitax
ial material using compliant substrates.