A KINETIC-STUDY OF THE ORDERING PROCESS IN TERNARY III-V SEMICONDUCTOR ALLOYS

In the epitaxial growth of ternary III-V semiconductor alloys, the mic roscopic diffusion theory is applied to studying the effect of surface reconstruction and the influence of sublayer atomic diffusion on the CuPt-type ordering process. It is found that the on-site energy induce d by reconstruction plays a central role in the kinetic process of the surface ordering. In view of the kinetics it is demonstrated that the surface ordering is frozen in after subsequent coverage and the subla yer diffusions have little influence on the ordering of the alloy. Con sequently, two variants of CuPt-type ordering are obtained through lay er-by-layer stacking. Moreover, during the sublayer ordering process, the order of the sublayer is shown to transiently overshoot the equili brium order. The ordering kinetics in the order-disorder heterostructu re is also investigated by considering the effects of growth temperatu re.