Epitaxial GaAs and pHEMT on aluminum-transformed AlAs nanofilms

Heterogeneous epitaxial growth between semiconductors and metals boosts novel device development and enables various applications. In this work, we have investigated the epitaxial growth of GaAs layers on top of a nanoscale aluminium-transformed AlAs film. The grown GaAs layers are single-crystalline and of high-quality, that has been evidenced by using various material characterization methods and by fabricating their high-electron mobility transistors. We found that an intriguing process named as “arsenidation” of aluminium film plays a key role in the successful epitaxy. Our work opens a window for growing semiconductor/metal hetero-structures for various device applications in the future.