Hydrogen Passivation of Interfacial Defects in MOCVD grown GaAs/InP

Abstract

AbstractThe results of a low temperature (5K) photoluminescence study of hydrogenation of GaAs on InP grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition are presented. An emission band at ~ 1.4 eV originating from the GaAs/InP interracial region shows a 30 fold increase in intensity relative to the GaAs band edge emission after exposure to hydrogen plasma for 30 min at 250°C. This improvement in intensity is attributed to hydrogen passivation of defects at the heterointerface caused by the large (≈4%) lattice mismatch between GaAs and InP. The passivation effect recovers on annealing the hydrogenated sample at 350°C. Excitation dependence of the ~1.4 eV band suggests that the interfacial region consists of a compositionally graded layer. Further, this band shifts to higher energy on annealing the sample in the temperature range 150-450°C with the hydrogenated sample exhibiting a larger shift than the untreated sample. It is suggested that the annealing induced peak shift arises due to intermixing of the compositionally graded interface and that the degree of intermixing is greater in the hydrogenated sample compared to the untreated sample.