Growth and characterization of thick epitaxial GaAs layers

We present an economical and non polluting vapor phase technique, allowing the growth of practically all III-V and II-VI compounds, using water as reactant. This technique will be illustrated here in the case of GaAs. We show that GaAs can be grown at very high growth rates. This has been used to obtain thick layers. We demonstrate that these layers exhibit good structural, electrical and optical properties when grown, at least, up to 5 /spl mu/m per minute. Since doping can be mastered, millimeter thick layers can be grown in a reasonable time, opening new applications for epitaxial GaAs layers such as high power electronics, nuclear detection and optics.