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Concept
Molecular-beam epitaxy
Summary
Molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) is an epitaxy method for thin-film deposition of single crystals. MBE is widely used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices, including transistors, and it is considered one of the fundamental tools for the development of nanotechnologies. MBE is used to fabricate diodes and MOSFETs (MOS field-effect transistors) at microwave frequencies, and to manufacture the lasers used to read optical discs (such as CDs and DVDs).
Original ideas of MBE process were first established by K. G. Günther. Films he deposited were not epitaxial, but were deposited on glass substrates. With the development of vacuum technology, MBE process was demonstrated by John Davey and Titus Pankey who succeeded in growing GaAs epitaxial films on single crystal GaAs substrates using Günther's method. Major subsequent development of MBE films was enabled by J.R. Arthur's investigations of kinetic behavior of growth mechanisms and Alfred Y. Cho's in situ observation of MBE process using reflection high-energy electron diffraction (RHEED) in the late 1960s.
Molecular-beam epitaxy takes place in high vacuum or ultra-high vacuum (10−8–10−12 Torr). The most important aspect of MBE is the deposition rate (typically less than 3,000 nm per hour) that allows the films to grow epitaxially. These deposition rates require proportionally better vacuum to achieve the same impurity levels as other deposition techniques. The absence of carrier gases, as well as the ultra-high vacuum environment, result in the highest achievable purity of the grown films.
In solid source MBE, elements such as gallium and arsenic, in ultra-pure form, are heated in separate quasi-Knudsen effusion cells or electron-beam evaporators until they begin to slowly sublime. The gaseous elements then condense on the wafer, where they may react with each other. In the example of gallium and arsenic, single-crystal gallium arsenide is formed. When evaporation sources such as copper or gold are used, the gaseous elements impinging on the surface may be adsorbed (after a time window where the impinging atoms will hop around the surface) or reflected.
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