Determination of diffusion length of minority carriers in epitaxial layers by photocurrent spectroscopy

Abstract

We have determined the minority carrier diffusion length in n-type and p-type GaAs epitaxial layers grown on GaAs substrates as well as on intentionally misoriented Si substrates by photocurrent spectroscopy. It is found that for heteroepitaxial GaAs-on-Si, the minority carrier diffusion length is limited by the amount of dislocation density irrespective of the doping level. The value of dislocation density obtained from diffusion length measurements agrees well with that obtained from the double-crystal x-ray diffraction measurements.