  The nitrides of group III metals: AlN, GaN and InN are very important
materials due to their applications for short wavelength opto-electronics
(light-emitting diodes and laser diodes). It is essential for the realization
of such novel devices to grow high-quality nitride single crystals. In this
paper, we report the first stages of the InP(1 0 0) surfaces nitridation in
order to grow high-quality nitride films. Indeed, the nitridation process is an
important step in the growth of nitrides [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 17 (1999)
2194; Phys. Status Solidi A 176 (1999) 595]. Previous works [Synth. Met. 90
(1997) 2233; Appl. Phys. Lett. 63 (1993) 1957] have shown that in situ Ar+ ions
bombardment is useful on the one hand to clean the surface, and on the other
hand to create droplets of metallic indium in well-controlled quantity. Then
the indium metallic enrichment of the surface, monitoring by elastic peak
electron spectroscopy (EPES) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) allows to
prepare the III-V semiconductors surfaces to the nitridation step. The
nitridated process has been performed with a high voltage plasma discharge cell
and has been studied using quantitative Auger electron spectroscopy, elastic
peak electron spectroscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), in
order to optimize the conditions of InN layers formation.
