A comparative study of the Ostwald ripening of As precipitates in LT-MBE grown and in As implanted GaAs

In this work, we compare the kinetic behavior of As precipitates in Low Temperature Molecular Beam Epitaxy (LT-MBE) grown and As implanted As rich GaAs layers. The evolution of the mean radius, density and volume fraction of As precipitates are measured by Transmission Electron Microscopy as a function of the annealing conditions on both type of layers. While for LT-MBE the As precipitates undergo a conservative Ostwald ripening, for implanted layers this growth is frozen. This behavior is tentatively explained by a vacancy deficit due to the presence of interstitial type extended defects in the implanted layers.