GaAsInP heteroepitaxy and GaAsInP MESFET fabrication by MOVPE

Abstract

Lattice-mismatched heteroepitaxy has attracted considerable attention in recent years. A great interest of these systems is the possibility of integrating devices from different materials on a single substrate. 1.3 and 1.5 μm InGaAs(P)/InP laser diodes are essential for optical communication, whereas InP field effect transistor technology is less developed than that of GaAs MESFET. The performances of laser diodes are much more sensitive to a high density of dislocations, so it would be interesting to grow GaAs MESFET on InP for integration with 1.3 and 1.5 μm lasers. Due to the large difference of the thermal expansion coefficient and lattice parameter between GaAs and InP, it is very difficult to grow GaAs epilayers of high quality on it is very difficult to grow of GaAs epilayer high quality on InP substrates due to the large difference of the thermal expansion coefficient and lattice parameter between GaAs and InP. A new method, metalorganic source modulation epitaxy (MOSME), which improves the crystal quality of GaAs epilayers on InP substrates by MOVPE, has been adopted in our laboratory. The lowest full width at half maximum (FWHM) of the double crystal X-ray (DCX) diffraction spectra reaches as low as 120 arcsec for a 5 μm thick layer. Structural properties (misorientation, lattice parameters and crystal quality) of 1.0-5.0 μm thick GaAs layers grown on InP have been measured by DCX diffraction. On GaAs MESFETs grown on InP, we have measured g m = 100 ms/mm.For these transitions, the current gain cut-off frequency (F t ) is around 12 GHz and the maximum frequency of oscillation (F max ) is higher than 30 GHz.