Hydrogen Incorporation and Carrier Reduction in Hydrogenated n-GaAs:Si and p-GaAs:Zn Crystals

Hydrogen implantation into either n-GaAs:Si or p-GaAs:Zn crystals leads to a neutralization of charge carriers, primarily through induced crystal damage. The resulting decrease in carriers is useful in opto-electronics applications for confining electrical current or optical radiation. Exposure of the same crystal materials to a hydrogen plasma also leads to reduction of the charge carriers, but through a passivation mechanism involving hydrogen-dopant atom complexes. This technique may be useful for opto-electronics device processing but further details converning the physical mechanisms need to be established. Here we present the results of investigations aimed at correlating the changes in carrier concentration as determined by infrared reflectivity measurements with atomic depth profiles obtained from secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). Differences between the use of hydrogen or deuterium plasmas are also reported.