GaP/Si(100) is considered as pseudomporphic virtual substrate for III/V-on-Si integration in order to reduce defects related to polar-on-nonpolar heteroepitaxy. The atomic structure of the GaP/Si(100) heterointerface is decisive to yield low defect densities and its dependence on nucleation conditions is still under debate. Recently, Beyer et al. suggested the formation of a 'pyramidal' structure as a general mechanism at polar-on-nonpolar interfaces [A. Beyer et al., Chem. Mat. 28, 3265 (2016)]. However, their DFT studies neglected the dependence of the calculated interfacial energies on appropriate chemical potentials and their findings are contradictory to recent and past experimental data.
@article{arxiv.1610.01758,
title = {Comment on pyramidal structure formation at the interface between III/V semiconductors and silicon},
author = {Thomas Hannappel and Oliver Supplie and Sebastian Bruckner and Matthias M. May and Peter Kleinschmidt and Oleksandr Romanyuk},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1610.01758},
year = {2016}
}