The technology of obtaining high quality epitaxial InSb thin films is important for applications in the Hall sensors and the IR detectors. The most available substrate material for that purpose is the semi-insulating GaAs. Unfortunately, there is a 15% misfit in the lattice parameter between InSb and GaAs, which makes the epitaxial growth difficult.
In the present contribution we report on a novel flash evaporation method for obtaining high quality epitaxial InSb films. We show that to obtain a well crystallographically oriented, in the (001) plane, InSb films with mirror smooth surface, a two stage evaporation process has to be applied. The first stage is a low temperature epitaxy (performed at 250^OC) and the second stage is a high temperature epitaxy (performed at 470^OC). In the first stage powdered InSb (the ration of Sb/In = 1) is evaporated, whereas in the second stage a mixture of powders of InSb and Sb, giving the ratio of Sb/In = 1.5, is evaporated. If the first stage is omitted, the obtained films have a rough and milky surface, and their XRD spectra can contain a small admixture of additional peaks from the (111) and (311) planes.
We have investigated the dependences of the electron mobility and the electron concentration of the films on the thickness of the underlayer obtained at 250^OC in the thickness range (0 - 80) nm. The films themselves were about 2 μm thick. It is found that the electron concentration is in the range (2 - 20)*10¹⁶cm^-3, and the maximum of the room temperature mobility of 25000 cm²/V*s is reached for the underlayer thickness of (10 -20) nm. The temperature dependence of the mobility is investigated in the temperature range from 77 K to 500 K and discussed.
The early stages of the underlayer growth are investigated with AFM. Those investigations performed on underlayers having thickness smaller than 15 nm suggest Stransky - Krastanov mode of growth.

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