Study of in situ laser modification of Ga-droplets

Abstract

In this paper, we report the study on the size regulation of Ga-droplets by in situ laser irradiation. Gallium (Ga) droplets are grown on GaAs (001) substrate by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and the in situ laser irradiation is carried out by using an ultraviolet pulsed laser. The results show that: The laser irradiation will cause the expansion of Ga-droplets and then the adjacent Ga-droplets can touch with each other and larger Ga-droplets can be formed by the fusion of two or more droplets. So the size of Ga-droplets can be re-modified by laser irradiation and such modification is positively correlated with the irradiation intensity. In other words, we can easily define the size of Ga-droplets by using different laser irradiation energy.