Anisotropic strain relaxation and growth mode dependence in highly lattice mismatched III-V systems

We report on TEM studies about the plastic strain relaxation in the highly mismatched InAs/GaAs(001) system. In the case of a layer-by-layer growth mode the misfit dislocation generation mechanism is observed to be anisotropic. We discuss this result with regard to the different chemically inequivalent dislocation types present in compound semiconductors.