The nature of dislocations and micro-twins in (111) films which had been grown onto (001) GaAs or (111) CdTe substrates, using molecular beam epitaxy techniques, was investigated by means of transmission electron microscopy. It was shown that a preliminary to micro-twin creation was the formation of 2-dimensional nuclei. The formation of micro-twins resulted in the creation of partial dislocation networks in the twinning plane, due to the presence of steps on the growth surface. The interaction of partial dislocations resulted in the creation of threading dislocations. It was concluded that an increase in the twin boundary density would lead to an increasing density of threading dislocations in (111) CdTe films.

I.V.Sabinina, A.K.Gutakovskii, J.G.Sidorov, V.D.Kuzmin: Physica Status Solidi A, 1991, 126[1], 181-8