X-ray diffraction peaks at glancing incidence and glancing exit from highly mismatched epitaxial layers

We find that the widths of double-crystal x-ray diffraction peaks in asymmetric reflections of relaxed GaAs/Si(001) heteroepitaxial layers in reciprocal diffraction geometries (glancing incidence and glancing exit) are notably different. This observation is in agreement with previous measurements on other heteroepitaxial systems but apparently contradicts the reciprocity principle of electrodynamics. We show that the apparent contradiction originates from the summation of the scattered waves that are collected by the detector in a double-crystal setup and resolve it by giving an appropriate description of the peak widths. (c) 2006 American Institute of Physics.