Influence of cooling rate on the liquid-phase epitaxial growth of Zn3P2

We report the liquid-phase epitaxial growth of Zn3P2 on InP (1 0 0) substrates by conventional horizontal sliding boat system using 100% In solvent. Different cooling rates of 0.2–1.0 °C/min have been adopted and the influence of supercooling on the properties of the grown epilayers is analyzed. The crystal structure and quality of the grown epilayers have been studied by X-ray diffraction and high-resolution X-ray rocking measurements, which revealed a good lattice matching between the epilayers and the substrate. The supercooling-induced morphologies and composition of the epilayers were studied by scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray analysis. The growth rate has been calculated and found that there exists a linear dependence between the growth rate and the cooling rate. Hall measurements showed that the grown layers are unintentionally doped p-type with a carrier mobility as high as 450 cm2/V s and a carrier concentration of 2.81×1018 cm−3 for the layers grown from 6 °C supercooled melt from the cooling rate of 0.4 °C/min.