Organometallic Vapor-Phase Epitaxy

Stringfellow was among the pioneers of the organometallic vapor phase epitaxial (OMVPE) growth technique, beginning his work in this area in 1975. He has published over 150 papers on this subject and delivered 30 invited papers at national and international conferences during the last 5 years. This work emphasizes the materials science aspects of OMVPE growth, including the thermodynamic and kinetic aspects of the process, the development of new source materials, and the growth of metastable alloys. The first epitaxial layers of InAsSb in the range of solid immiscibility. InPSb, GaPSb, GaInPSb, GaInAsSb, InAsBi, InSbBi, and InAsSbBi, inside the miscibility gap, were produced in Stringfellow's group. The growth of immiscible alloys has led to the discovery of atomic scale ordering in many III/V alloys. He and his students recently demonstrated the control of domain size in these ordered materials by using grooves photolithographically produced on the (001) surface. This had resulted in the largest ordered domains ever produced in semiconductor materials. Current research focuses on the ordering mechanism, particularly the effects of surface structure on ordering.Other important work is involved with the development of new procedures for OMVPE. He and his students pioneered the now widely-used tertiarybutylarsine and tertiarybutylphosphine. They also used several other precursors for the first time, including: ethyldimethylindium, triisopropylantimony, triallylantimony, trivinylantimony, and tertiarybutyldimethylantimony.