Study of the effect of ultra-low arsenic flux on the formation of In(As)/GaAs nanostructures by droplet epitaxy

In this paper, we present the results of studying the influence of arsenic pressure in the range of ultra-low values (10$^{-7}$–10$^{-6}$ Pa) on the processes of modification of In/GaAs(001) droplets with various initial sizes obtained by droplet epitaxy. We experimentally demonstrate that exposure of droplets to the ultralow arsenic flux makes it possible to reduce the droplet size to subcritical sizes while maintaining the initially specified surface density. The exposure of droplet nanostructures in the arsenic flux can be accompanied only by a decrease in their size, which is more typical for droplets obtained at large amounts of indium deposited material. For droplets with a smaller initial size, the formation of rings along the perimeter of the initial droplets and holes inside the rings is typical along with the droplet reduction. We also reveal that the dependence of the relative volume of droplets subjected to diffusion decay in the arsenic flux becomes more significant with a decrease in their initial size.