Thermally induced diffusion in GaInNAs/GaAs and GaInAs/GaAs quantum wells grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy

Abstract

The effects of the thermal annealing induced diffusion on the photoluminescence (PL) of a GaAsGaInAsGaAsGaInNAsGaAs quantum well (QW) structure grown by solid source molecular beam epitaxy are studied. The PL experimental results in conjunction with the numerical quantum-mechanical modeling that predicts the changes in the QW confining potential with group-III atomic diffusion, have been used to obtain the values for diffusion coefficient. The activation energies of GaInAsGaAs QW (ED,GIA) were found to be between 0.49 to 0.51 eV, while that of GaInNAsGaAs QW (ED,GINA) showed comparable values of between 0.6 to a 0.67 eV, as annealing time increases from 10 to 30 s. The ED,GIA and ED,GINA values are attributed to the same interstitial diffusion mechanism. © 2005 American Institute of Physics.