Investigation of interfacial roughness of In_xGa_1-xAs epitaxial layers on GaAs and InP substrates by soft x-ray reflectivity

The grazing incidence x-ray reflectivity is a nondestructive and sensitive technique for probing the depth profile of electron density in layered structures. This method has been utilized in the soft x-ray regime to determine the roughness of interfaces, and the epilayer thickness in In_xGa _1-xAs/InP and In_xGa_1-xAs/GaAs heterostructures, for x=0.57 and x=0.60, grown by molecular beam epitaxy. By fitting the experimental results to our model, assuming uncorrelated interfacial roughness, we conclude that the top surface roughness does not depend on the type of the substrate or presence of stress in the epilayer, and is always smaller than interfacial roughness. The main factors which control the interfacial roughness are the quality of substrate and/or growth conditions rather than strain or lattice mismatch.