| Dilute nitride semiconductor alloys are useful for a wide range of applications. A fundamental understanding of how various growth regimes affect the structural, optical and electronic properties is needed for further optimization of device performance. This thesis explores these issues in GaAsN.; We investigated the temperature-dependent mechanisms of growth for GaAsN films. At low temperatures, limited adatom surface mobility leads to layer-by-layer growth. As the temperature increases, the interplay between adatom surface diffusivity and the step-edge diffusion barrier leads to the formation of "mounds". For sufficiently high temperatures, adatoms overcome the step-edge diffusion barrier, resulting in layer-by-layer growth once again.; Using a combination of nuclear reaction analysis and Rutherford backscattering spectrometry, we observe significant composition-dependent incorporation of N into non-substitutional sites, presumably as either N-N or N-As split interstitials. The (2x1) reconstruction is identified as the surface structure which leads to the highest substitutional N incorporation, presumably due to the high number of group V sites per unit area available for N-As surface exchange.; For coherently strained films, a comparison of stresses measured via in-situ wafer curvature measurements, with those determined from x-ray rocking curves is used to quantify composition-dependent elastic constant bowing parameters. For films with x>2.5%, we observe that stress relaxation occurs by a combination of elastic relaxation via island formation and plastic relaxation associated with the formation of stacking faults.; Optical absorption measurements reveal a substitutional nitrogen composition-dependent band gap energy reduction, which is less significant than typical literature reports. However, when the data are corrected to account for the typical 20% incorporation of non-substitutional nitrogen, all measurements reveal a band gap reduction of ∼125 meV per 1% N. Thus, GaAsN band gap bowing is most significantly influenced by substitutional nitrogen and smaller than previously reported.; For bulk-like films, the electron mobility is observed to decrease with increasing N, independent of the arsenic species employed during growth. For GaAsN/GaAs:Si superlattices, the interface quality and electron mobilities are improved by controlling the N plasma flux using a pneumatic gate valve. In the AlGaAs/GaAsN channel layers, N-induced neutral scattering sources are identified as the dominant source of carrier scattering. |
