Assessing epitaxial regrowth material quality on a micro-transfer printed GaAs substrate

•Epitaxial regrowth accomplished on a membrane that was removed from its native substrate.•Power-dependent photoluminescence shows comparable recombination rates versus baseline.•Cathodoluminescence map indicates uniform bulk crystal quality on membrane epitaxy. Micro-transfer printing has demonstrated value for device- and array-level heterogeneous integration in a variety of applications. Here, it is used instead to assemble unique substrates with the potential to enable III–V growth templates that are both low-cost and specified at any desired lattice parameter within the range of III–V materials. Critical to this, epitaxial growth crystal quality must be established as comparable to that produced on conventional epi-ready substrates. We demonstrate epitaxial regrowth on gallium arsenide membranes that were transfer printed from their source substrate and onto a target handle. Both morphology and luminescence properties were characterized. Comparing the transfer printed membrane epitaxy with epitaxy on a conventional substrate, we found recombination rates and spatial uniformity from power-dependent photoluminescence and cathodoluminescence, respectively, to yield similar results, suggesting material quality was not adversely limited by the engineered substrate.