Monitoring of elastic stresses with optical system for measuring the substrate curvature in growth of III–N heterostructures by molecular-beam epitaxy

An original optical system for measuring substrate curvature (OSMSC) is described. The system enables a high-precision analysis of the processes of generation and relaxation of elastic stresses in growth of heterostructures (HSs) based on nitride compounds III–N by plasma-assisted molecular-beam epitaxy (PA-MBE). The application of OSMSC to analyze the growth of GaN/AlN/Si(111) HSs made it possible not only to observe in detail the variation dynamics of elastic stresses in this structure in its metal-enriched growth by low-temperature PA-MBE, but also to develop an HS design eliminating the effect of layer cracking by controlling the compressive stresses.