Effects of High-Temperature Growth of Dislocation Filter Layers in GaAs-on-Si

Abstract

GaAs-on-Si templates with two different dislocation filter layers (DFLs) were grown at 550 °C low-temperature (LT)-DFL and 660 °C high-temperature (HT)-DFL using metal organic vapor-phase epitaxy and the effects of the growth temperature were studied. The threading dislocation density (TDD) values of LT-DFL and HT-DFL were 5.2 × 107 cm−2 and 1.5 × 107 cm−2, respectively. The 1.5 × 107 cm−2 of TDD in HT-DFL is reduced by almost one order compared to the 1.2 × 108 cm−2 of that in the control sample without DFLs. The annihilation process was mainly observed in the HT-DFL by a transmission electron microscope, resulting in a lower TDD. The 500-nm-thick GaAs bulk layer and InAs QDs were regrown on GaAs-on-Si templates and the optical properties were also evaluated by photoluminescence (PL). The highest PL peak intensity of the HT-DFL indicates that less non-radiative recombination in both the GaAs bulk and QDs occurred due to the reduced TDD. The GaAs p–i–n diodes were also fabricated to analyze the bulk leakage (JB) and the surface leakage current. The JB of HT-DFL shows the lowest value of 3.625 × 10–7 A/cm−2 at applied bias voltage of 1 V, which is 20 times lower than the JB of the control sample without DFLs. This supports that the high-temperature growth of DFL can make a good performance GaAs device on Si.