Controlling n-Type Carrier Density from Er Doping of InGaAs with MBE Growth Temperature

Abstract

Under certain growth conditions in molecular beam epitaxy, erbium, indium, gallium, and arsenic form a two-phase composite, consisting of ErAs nanoparticles embedded in dilute Er-doped In0.53Ga0.47As. This paper further explores the effect of growth conditions, specifically growth temperature, on the nanostructure of this material and the resulting thermal and electrical transport properties. For a set of samples grown with substrate temperatures varying from 430°C to 525°C, we find that the thermal conductivity decreases slightly with increasing growth temperature (from 4.8 W/m K to 4.1 W/m K) while the electrical conductivity decreases dramatically with increasing growth temperature (from 2100 S/cm to 110 S/cm), which is largely due to decreasing carrier concentration. At higher growth temperatures, more erbium precipitates out of solution and the size and density of the ErAs nanoparticles increase, as characterized by high-angle annular dark-field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF-STEM), while the total erbium concentration does not change with growth temperature, as characterized by Rutherford backscatter spectrometry (RBS). Measurement of the erbium concentration by secondary-ion mass spectrometry suggests that the Er bonding configuration changes with growth temperature. These results indicate that increasing the ratio of solute Er atoms in the In0.53Ga0.47As host to precipitated Er atoms in ErAs particles increases the carrier density and electrical conductivity of the total composite material.