Creation of Stacking Faults at Substrate Steps in Zns Thin Films Epitaxially Grown on GaAs (001)

Abstract Electroluminescence (EL)-based displays are an emerging technology for next generation flat panel displays. ZnS is an important component material for light emitting devices and EL-displays. To make this material useful for high efficiency and low voltage EL applications, the density of dislocations is required to be low. High quality single crystalline ZnS thin films have recently been grown by chemical beam epitaxy [1]. This paper focuses on studying the formation mechanism of stacking faults in the film and its relation with the interface structure between the substrate and the film [2]. Stacking faults are the main defects present in the film (Fig. 1). All four stacking faults (sf) are intrinsic and sf1, growing towards the left-hand side from the interface, is only of short range since after crossing sf2 the defect is terminated by a Shockley partial dislocation and the normal stacking sequence is restored. This is the mechanism that annihilates most of the stacking faults generated from the interface within the first 70 nm thickness range.