Solid State Electronic Devices, 7th Edition

1.4 Epitaxial Growth

One of the most important and versatile methods of crystal growth for device applications is the growth of a thin crystal layer on a wafer of a compatible crystal. The substrate crystal may be a wafer of the same material as the grown layer or a different material with a similar lattice structure. In this process the substrate serves as the seed crystal onto which the new crystalline material grows. The growing crystal layer maintains the crystal structure and orientation of the substrate. The technique of growing an oriented single-​crystal layer on a substrate wafer is called epitaxial growth, or epitaxy. As we shall see in this section, epitaxial growth can be performed at temperatures considerably below the melting point ...