14. Epitaxial Crystal Growth: Methods and Materials

The epitaxial growth of thin films of material for a wide range of applications in electronics and optoelectronics is a critical activity in many industries. The original growth technique used, in most instances, was liquid-phase epitaxy (LPE), as this was the simplest and often the cheapest route to producing device-quality layers. These days, while some production processes are still based on LPE, most research into and (increasingly) much of the production of electronic and optoelectronic devices now centers on metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). These techniques are more versatile than LPE (although the equipment is more expensive), and they can readily produce multilayer structures with atomic-layer control, which has become more and more important in the type of nanoscale engineering used to produce device structures in as-grown multilayers. This chapter covers these three basic techniques, including some of their more common variants, and outlines the relative advantages and disadvantages of each. Some examples of growth in various important systems are also outlined for each of the three techniques.