Ion mixing of semiconductor superlattices

Abstract Compositional disordering of III–V compound superlattice structures has received considerable attention recently due to its potential application for photonic devices. The conventional method to induce compositional disorder is to implant a moderate dose of impurity ions (∼ 10 15 cm −2 ) into the structure at room temperature, followed by a high-temperature annealing step (this process is referred to as IA here). Ion irradiation at room temperature alone does not cause any significant intermixing of layers. The subsequent high-temperature annealing step tends to restrict device processing flexibility. Ion mixing (IM) is capable of enhancing compositional disordering of layers at a rate which increases exponentially with the ion irradiation temperature. As a processing technique to planarize devices, ion mixing appears to be an attractive technology. In this work, we investigate compositional disordering in the AlGaAs/GaAs and the InGaAs/InP systems using ion mixing. We found that the ion mixing behavior of these two systems shows a thermally activated regime as well as an athermal regime, similar to that observed for metal-metal and metal-semiconductor systems. Ion mixing is observed to induce compositional disordering at significantly lower temperatures than that for the IA process. We have compared the two processes in terms of four parameters (1) irradiation temperature, (2) dose dependence, (3) annealing, and (4) electrically active ions. We found that the IM process is more efficient in utilizing the defects generated by ion irradiation to cause disordering. Both the physical mechanism of ion mixing and possible device implications will be discussed.