Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 February 2011
The heteroepitaxial growth of gallium phosphide on silicon (GaP/Si) is a useful step towards integration of III-V based devices onto silicon. GaP layers grown on silicon substrates of different orientations using metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) were characterized using transmission electron microscopy (TEM) with an attempt to understand the epilayer growth characteristics. Despite the fact that the GaP/Si system has a low misfit (≈0.4 %), a high density of crystal stacking defects was commonly observed. Inversion domain boundaries (IDBs) were another common defect observed in regions where the fault density was reduced.