Strain relaxation and compositional separation during growth of InGaAs/GaAs(001)

Strain relaxation of InxGa1−xAs/GaAs(001) with systematically changed In content between x=0.23 and x=0.80 has been studied using in situ synchrotron X-ray diffraction during molecular beam epitaxy growth. Correlation between the In composition and the degree of relaxation in the InGaAs films was derived from the reciprocal space maps. While InGaAs with a uniform composition was grown in the regime of the two-dimensional growth, a separation of the In composition was observed for the InGaAs films grown in the Stranski-Krastanov mode.