InSb surface cleaning from oxides is an important stage in epitaxial growth and post-growth technological processes, as an oxide layer leads to the formation of defects in epitaxial layers and the degradation of device parameters. It has been shown that InSb surface cleaning from oxides by annealing in an indium flux makes it possible to decrease the annealing temperature and surface roughness as compared to thermal vacuum annealing: the root-mean-square roughness of the InSb surface is 1. 2 nm after cleaning by vacuum annealing at 400 ^ C and 0. 9 nm after cleaning by annealing in an indium flux at 355 ^ C with further vacuum annealing at 380 ^ C. A lower surface roughness of InSb substrates after the cleaning stage will makes it possible to improve the crystal quality of grown epitaxial layers. Based on the in situ monitoring of the oxides desorption process by high-energy electron diffraction, it has been shown that an antimony flux decelerates the indium oxide desorption process to lead to the need for increasing the maximum annealing temperature.
Sukhanov et al. (Mon,) studied this question.