Effect of ion damage on the electrical and optical behavior of p-type GaAs and InGap

Abstract

The effect of ion damage generated by exposure to argon or hydrogen electron cyclotron resonance plasmas at various conditions was investigated for p-InGaP and p-GaAs. Room temperature photoluminescence (PL) and either capacitance-voltage or Hall measurements were performed to determine the effect of these various treatments on the efficiency of band edge recombination and the electrical compensation. The feasibility of damage removal was investigated by examining the electrical and optical behavior after annealing at various temperatures. For argon plasma exposed InGaP, restoration of the PL intensity to ∼30% of as-grown sample could be achieved at modest annealing temperatures of ∼600°C. For hydrogen plasma exposed carbon doped GaAs, on the other hand, almost 80 ∼ 90% of the PL intensity of the as-grown sample could be recovered at 600°C. For heavily C-doped GaAs (p ∼ 10²¹cm⁻³), there was significant degradation of the optical properties at annealing temperatures ≥600°C.