Short Courses

Maarten Leys, IMEC Leuven, Belgium

In this course the fundamental aspects of crystal growth and epitaxy will be discussed. We will first focus on thermodynamic aspects of equilibrium, etching and growth. Computer simulations (movies) will be shown to demonstrate the concept of 2 dimensional nucleation and the critical cluster size. Also, the effects of dislocations and impurities are made clear. Next, we will consider substrates and surface structures/reconstructions. Getting closer to practice the VPE processes of Si and GaAs will be discussed. Finally we will consider MBE as growth technique for both GaAs as well as GaN.

Nigel Mason, United Kingdom

Over the last 15 years, the understanding of the chemical and physical processes occurring within the MOVPE reactor have been transformed by the use of an increasing number of optical tools to measure such parameters as the crystal surface reconstruction, gas phase chemical composition, growth rate, wafer bow and wafer temperature uniformity. The measurement of the above parameters has been achieved using a variety of white-light based techniques including simple reflectance, ellipsometry, reflectance-difference and reflectance-anisotropy. Monochromatic techniques used include reflectance [both normal and at Brewster's angle] as well as laser light scattering. Both types of approach can give very precise information about both the real and imaginary components of the materials refractive index and hence growth rate and crystal film quality. Wafer temperatures can be measured by a variety of techniques including band-edge determination and pyrometry.
The lecture will highlight all of the above techniques, critically examine their successes and limitations and attempt to steer the interested student in the direction of appropriate literature where further data is available.

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Frank Brunner, FBH Berlin, Germany