Liquid section epitaxy (LPE) is a mature know-how and has been used within the manufacturing of III-V compound semiconductor optoelectronic units for some 40 years.

LPE has additionally been utilized to silicon, germanium, SiC, and II-VI and IV-VI compound semiconductors, in addition to magnetic garnets, superconductors, ferroelectrics, and different optical supplies.

Many semiconductor units together with light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes, infrared detectors, heterojunction bipolar transistors and heterointerface photo voltaic cells have been pioneered with LPE.

Additional, LPE can produce epitaxial semiconductor layers of superior materials high quality with respect to minority service lifetime and luminescence effectivity.

Nonetheless, LPE has fallen into disfavor in recent times, particularly for system purposes requiring large-area uniformity, crucial layer thickness and composition management, and easy and abrupt surfaces and interfaces.

For making superlattices, quantum wells, strained layer constructions, and heterostructures with massive lattice mismatch or heterostructures comprised of supplies with substantial chemical dissimilarity

(e.g. GaAs-on-silicon), LPE is usually dismissed out of hand in favor of different epitaxy applied sciences resembling molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) or metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD).

One would possibly conclude that regardless of the lengthy and venerable historical past of LPE, progress has stagnated with few prospects for brand spanking new purposes.

Particularly, LPE suffers from broadly held perceptions of poor reproducibility, and intrinsic difficulties in scale-up for large-area substrates and high-throughput operation.

Nonetheless, and because the chapters on this guide describe intimately, on-going efforts and new developments in LPE proceed to widen its scope of purposes and circumvent its customary limitations.

New modes of liquid section epitaxial development can present novel system constructions. Among the conventional shortcomings of LPE as talked about above are addressed by new strategies and approaches based mostly on novel soften chemistries, different strategies of inducing development

(e.g. by way of imposed temperature gradients, electrical currents, mixing, Peltier cooling, or solvent evaporation), hybrid processes that mix LPE with different strategies of epitaxy, and LPE on structured or masked substrates.

Additional, distinctive attributes that distinguish LPE from competing semiconductor epitaxy applied sciences (MBE and MOCVD) allow it to serve necessary niches in semiconductor system know-how.

To underscore a few of the relative or distinctive benefits of LPE for the expansion of semiconductor units, a couple of of the extra necessary options of LPE could also be listed, and embody:

1. Excessive development charges. Development charges within the vary of 0.1–1µm min−1 might be achieved with LPE. That is 10 to 100 instances quicker than MBE or MOCVD, and thus thick system constructions are possible with LPE.

2. The wide selection of dopants out there with LPE. Just about any aspect added to the soften will likely be included into the epitaxial layer to some finite diploma.

A lot of the periodic desk might be utilized as dopants in LPE, and thus, LPE is a wonderful device for basic doping research.

3. The preferential segregation of deleterious impurities to the liquid section that ends in low background impurities within the epitaxial layer. LPE can produce semiconductor materials of extraordinarily excessive purity.

4. The low level defect densities as a result of near-equilibrium development circumstances and/or favorable chemical potentials of crystal elements within the liquid section.

5. The absence of extremely poisonous precursors or by-products.

6. Low capital tools and working prices.

7. The feasibility of selective epitaxy and epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELO) with excessive side ratios.

8. The power to provide formed or faceted crystals for novel system constructions.

Download Liquid Phase Epitaxy of Digital, Optical and Optoelectronic Supplies by Peter Capper and Michael Mauk in PDF format free of charge.