Plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy as a method of production of nitride blue-violet laser diodes was considered. The current state-of-the-art, and future directions, were reviewed. Two features received particular attention. One was epitaxial growth, under metal-rich conditions, which permitted effective lateral diffusion of N adatoms at low growth temperatures. The other was the role played by threading dislocations in destabilizing the growth front. Low-temperature growth by plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy on dislocation-free GaN substrates was instrumental in achieving high-performance opto-electronic structures. The inherent capability of this process to sustain the 2-dimensional step-flow growth mode (with straight and parallel atomic steps) at low growth temperatures opened up the possibility of the growth of strained multilayer structures having no compositional fluctuations and having flat interfaces.

Role of Dislocation-Free GaN Substrates in the Growth of Indium Containing Optoelectronic Structures by Plasma-Assisted MBE. C.Skierbiszewski, M.Siekacz, P.Perlin, A.Feduniewicz-Żmuda, G.Cywiński, I.Grzegory, M.Leszczyński, Z.R.Wasilewski, S.Porowski: Journal of Crystal Growth, 2007, 305[2], 346-54