Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 February 2011
The relative misorientation (tilt) between the epilayer and substrate (400) lattice planes of InP epilayers grown by gas-source molecular beam epitaxy on (100) GaAs substrates misoriented towards the (110) plane was studied by high resolution x-ray diffraction. For the growth temperature of 490–500°C, the direction of the relative tilt was nearly coincident with the direction of the substrate lattice plane tilting. In contrary, when a buffer layer was deposited at a lower temperature of 400–450°C prior to growth, an azimuthal rotation of about 45° was found between the directions of the relative tilt and the substrate lattice plane tilting. In order to explain the results, a temperature-dependent anisotropic nucleation model is proposed.