The morphological instability of the phase boundary often appears during exposure of the multicomponent liquid phase of A^{III}B^{V} compounds and the binary substrates. The deviation from the thermodynamic equilibrium of the heterosystem at the stage of the "liquid-solid" contact during heteroepitaxy of A^{III}B^{V} compounds can lead in numerous instances to the so-called catastrophic erosion of the substrates. Catastrophic erosion of the solid phase surface manifests itself in selective etching (reaching considerable depth beneath the surface) or even in complete melting of the substrate during contact with liquid solution. The analysis of the energy balance at the exposure border of initially saturated liquid phase and the particular binary substrate enables to define the driving force of this effect. In the present paper, there are presented the results of analysis of the erosion processes in the Ga-In-P-As/InP system.
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