Trichloride-Hydride Vpe: A Hybrid Regrowth Process for III-V Epitaxial Heterostructures

Abstract

AbstractInP based alloy epitaxial heterostructures currently are being developed as light sources and detectors for optoelectronic applications. High performance requirements at very high frequency operation have resulted in the need for complex device structures which can require one or more epitaxial steps. As a result, hybrid growth techniques combining LPE with either hydride VPE, trichloride VPE or metal organic CVD previously have been used to grow emitter and photodetector heterostructures. In this paper, a hybrid trichloride-hydride VPE growth technique for complex heterostructures is described. Trichloride VPE which is particularly suited for certain regrowth applications because of its inherent in-situ etching capability has been successfully utilized to regrow low-doped, high purity InP on InP/InGaAs/InGaAsP heterostructures grown by hydride VPE. Transmission electron microscopy has shown that the regrowth interface is free of major defects and dislocations. P-diffused APD mesa devices obtained from these structures were operated with fields at the regrowth interface as high as 3.8 × 105V/cm. Primary dark currents were observed as low as 1.4nA.