Effect of the growth mode on the two- to three-dimensional transition of InAs grown on vicinal GaAs(001) substrates

Some differences were observed between conventional molecular-beam epitaxy (MBE) and mobility enhanced epitaxy (MEE) of InAs on a vicinal GaAs(001) substrate in the variation of the number density N of the InAs islands, with additional InAs coverage (θ-θ(c)) after the critical InAs coverage θ(c) during the two- to three-dimensional (2D-3D) transition. For MBE the variation was consistent with the power law N(θ)∼(θ-θ(c))(α); while for MEE, the linear relation [Formula: see text] was observed. The difference is discussed in terms of the randomness in the nucleation of the InAs islands.