Unintentionally doped gallium antimonide has been grown by molecular-beam epitaxy on gallium arsenide and gallium antimonide. Substrate temperatures in the range 480 to 620 °C and antimony to gallium flux ratios from 0.65 : 1 to 6.5 : 1 have been investigated. The deposition conditions have been related to growth morphology and to the electrical and optical properties of the epitaxial films. A strong correlation has been found between the quality of the layers and the degree of excess antimony flux; the best material in terms of both optical and electrical properties was obtained with the minimum antimony stable growth at a particular substrate temperature. All the material exhibited residual p-type behavior. The lowest hole concentration achieved was 7.8×1015 cm−3 with a corresponding room-temperature mobility of 950 cm2/V s. The narrowest PL (photoluminescence) features observed were peaks associated with bound exciton transitions with half-widths of 2–3 meV.

Residence lifetimes of Mg on GaAs surfaces were observed using 10 KV reflection electron diffraction and Auger electron spectroscopy to decrease from ∼120 s at 550 °C to ∼1 s at 600 °C. The electrical incorporation coefficient is ∼0.3 at and below 500 °C decreasing to ∼3×10−4 at 600 °C at the expense of desorption. Hole mobilities of uniformly Mg-doped samples are as good as those for equivalently Be-doped GaAs samples. Calcium does not behave as a shallow acceptor in GaAs grown by molecular-beam epitaxy.

Telegraph noise, i.e., two-level fluctuations (TLF), in the magnetoresistance of Er-doped GaAs has been used to probe the magnetic moment of the small ErAs clusters formed during the molecular beam epitaxy growth process. At high temperatures the TLF are thermally activated but below 350 mK tunneling of the magnetization dominates.

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Gallium arsenide doped with erbium has been grown by molecular beam epitaxy. At growth temperatures in the range 540–605 °C, and with arsenic to gallium flux ratios of 2 and more, the erbium forms uniform crystalline microprecipitates of ErAs when the concentration exceeds 7×1017 cm−3. The diameter can be varied in the range 11–21 Å by altering the growth temperature. Reducing the arsenic to gallium flux ratio to close to stoichiometry changes the growth mode to one yielding quantum wires aligned in the growth direction. Subtle changes in growth conditions lead to bifurcated structures, which we refer to as quantum trees.