Bibcode
Lee, Ko-Hsin; Thomas, Kevin; Gocalinska, Agnieszka; Manganaro, M.; Pelucchi, Emanuele; Peters, Frank H.; Corbett, Brian
Bibliographical reference
Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 112, Issue 9, pp. 093109-093109-4 (2012).
Advertised on:
11
2012
Journal
Citations
4
Refereed citations
3
Description
We analyze the composition profiles within intermixed and non-intermixed
AlInGaAs-based multiple quantum wells structures by secondary ion mass
spectrometry and observe that the band gap blue shift is mainly
attributed to the interdiffusion of In and Ga atoms between the quantum
wells and the barriers. Based on these results, several AlInGaAs-based
single quantum well (SQW) structures with various compressive strain
(CS) levels were grown and their photoluminescence spectra were
investigated after the intermixing process involving the encapsulation
of thin SiNx dielectric films on the surface followed by
rapid thermal annealing. In addition to the annealing temperature, we
report that the band gap shift can be also enhanced by increasing the CS
level in the SQW. For instance, at an annealing temperature of 850
°C, the photoluminescence blue shift is found to reach more than 110
nm for the sample with 1.2%-CS SQW, but only 35 nm with 0.4%-CS SQW. We
expect that this relatively larger atomic compositional gradient of In
(and Ga) between the compressively strained quantum well and the barrier
can facilitate the atomic interdiffusion and it thus leads to the larger
band gap shift.