Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition of III-V Semiconductors

Metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) is a process in which two or more metalorganic chemicals (for instance, trimethylgallium) or one or more metalorganic sources and one or more hydride sources (for instance, arsine, AsH(3)) are used to form the corresponding intermetallic crystalline solid solution. MOCVD materials technology is a vapor-phase growth process that is becoming widely used to study the basic physics of novel materials and to grow complex semiconductor device structures for new optoelectronic and photonic systems. The MOCVD process is described and some of the device applications and results that have been realized with it are reviewed, with particular emphasis on the III-V compound semiconductors.