Interdiffusion in Quantum Wells: Mixing Mechanisms and Energy Levels

Abstract

AbstractCompositional interdiffusion in Al0.3Ga0.7As/GaAs superlattice structures with equal 3.5 nm barrier and well widths induced by Si focused ion beam implantation and subsequent rapid thermal annealing has been modeled. A strong depth dependence of the mixing process is observed at a Si++ energy of 100 keV and at a dose of 1×1014 cm−2; this depth dependence is modeled by considering the second derivative of the vacancy profile. That is the maximum in the vacancy injection generated by the transient vacancy concentration gradient. We have included the dynamics of the spatial vacancy profile in the model and find good agreement with experimental results.Interdiffusion across the well/barrier interfaces modifies the subband structure in AlGaAs/GaAs single quantum well (QW) structures. We have investigated the interrelated changes in both confinement energy of the subband states and the composition dependence of the bandgap energy in the QW, both of which are a strong function of the initial well width. Higher order transitions are found to be more sensitive than the ground state transitions to interdiffusion especially during the early stages of interdiffusion. These calculations model the experimental measurements (photoluminescence and photoreflectance) which are used to characterize interdiffused QW structures.