Observation of ghost islands and surfactant effect of surface gallium atoms during GaN growth by molecular beam epitaxy

We observe ghost islands formed on terraces during homoepitaxial nucleation of GaN. We attribute the ghost islands to intermediate nucleation states, which can be driven into normal islands by scanning tunneling microscopy. The formation of ghost islands is related to excess Ga atoms on the surface. The excess Ga also affect island number density: by increasing Ga coverage, the island density first decreases, reaching a minimum at about 1 monolayer (ML) Ga and then increases rapidly for coverages above 1 ML. This nonmonotonic behavior points to a surfactant effect of the Ga atoms.