X‐ray diffraction study of intentionally disordered GaAlAs‐GaAs superlattices

A series of six intentionally disordered GaAlAs‐GaAs superstructures grown by molecular‐beam epitaxy has been investigated using x‐ray diffraction techniques. Experimental diagrams show unusual effects increasing with disorder: only nonzero‐order satellites are really affected by this kind of disturbance. A mathematical model directly derived from the basic scattering expression is described. By means of this model, which requires for numerical applications the knowledge of the growth sequence, we calculate the diffraction profile of each sample and find a very good agreement with the experiments. We discuss the effect of some changes in the growth sequence and finally show that this model can be used in the general case to take into account the interface roughness or the presence of enlarged wells in ordered superstructures.