We have investigated the optical properties of GaAs/AlAs superlattices grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) and atomic layer MBE (ALMBE) on {113}A‐oriented GaAs substrates. The corrugation which appears in the samples obtained by MBE does not exhibit any periodicity. Phonon‐associated replicas are only observed on the photoluminescence excitation spectra of ALMBE superlattices. It was found that the observed differences can be attributed to the growth techniques employed in the synthesis of the samples: MBE superlattices have rougher interfaces than the ALMBE ones, but a lower number of nonradiative recombination centers. ©1995 American Institute of Physics.