Abstract. In the epitaxial growth of ternary III - V semiconductor alloys, the microscopic diffusion theory is applied to studying the effect of surface reconstruction and the influence of sublayer atomic diffusion on the CuPt-type ordering process. It is found that the on-site energy induced by reconstruction plays a central role in the kinetic process of the surface ordering. In view of the kinetics it is demonstrated that the surface ordering is frozen in after subsequent coverage and the sublayer diffusions have little influence on the ordering of the alloy. Consequently, two variants of CuPt-type ordering are obtained through layer-by-layer stacking. Moreover, during the sublayer ordering process, the order of the sublayer is shown to transiently overshoot the equilibrium order. The ordering kinetics in the order - disorder heterostructure is also investigated by considering the effects of growth temperature.

Print publication: Issue 27 (7 July 1997)
Received 17 October 1996, in final form 17 March 1997