A new technique of liquid phase epitaxy (LPE) has been proposed in this work. It allows to eliminate known disadvantages of LPE by creating short-time contact between a substrate and a solution-melt, as well as due to segmental deposition of an epitaxial layer over the working substrate surface. The short-time of the contact is achieved by the means of Ampere force acting on the solution-melt. And the contact itself between the substrate and the solution-melt is realized pointwise (or segmentally) over the substrate surface using the scanning principle. The new technique was named "scanning liquid phase epitaxy". One of the modifications of device realization of the technique proposed has been considered and its principle of operation has been described. Preliminary theoretical investigations and experimental processes of semiconductor epitaxial layers obtaining have proved principal operational capability of the new technique. The technique developed allows to obtain thin and ultrathin epitaxial layers on the substrates of very large area which is limited only by the growth equipment size.
At the current stage of our investigation our aim is not to study the quality of the grown films. We investigate just the principal operability of the newly developed technique using the experimental set-up manufactured by the authors. Thus the samples obtained have not been studied in detail i.e. defects density, uniformity of the layers etc. Now we have confirmed that our technique is capable of the substrate wetting, cleansing as well as a semiconductor material deposition.
The special feature of the technique is the segmental contact between a solution-melt and a substrate performed by using the scanning principle. The experimental set-up available allows to form just a segment of an epitaxial layer of 2x2 mm2 size. We believe this is quite enough for the principal confirmation of the operability of the technique developed at this step of our investigation.
