We realized “compliant” substrates in the square centimeter range by twist-wafer bonding of an (100) GaAs handle wafer to another (100) GaAs wafer with a several nm thick epitaxially grown GaAs layer followed by an appropriate back-etch procedure. The twist angle between the two GaAs wafers was chosen between 4 and 15 degrees. The twisted layers were characterized by area scanned X-ray diffraction, optical and electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. Occasionally we observed regions showing pinholes in the transferred thin twistbonded GaAs layer.
After epitaxial deposition of 300 nm InP and InGaAs films with different degrees of mismatch on these substrates, transmission electron microscopy revealed grains which are epitaxially oriented to either the substrate or the twist-bonded layer. The grain boundaries between the twisted and untwisted grains probably collect threading dislocations, thus reducing their density in the areas free of boundaries.