Investigation of interface intermixing and roughening in low-temperature-grown AlAs/GaAs multiple quantum wells during thermal annealing by chemical lattice imaging and x-ray diffraction

Abstract

The effect of thermal annealing on the interface quality in undoped, AlAs/GaAs multiple quantum well (MQW) structures grown at a low substrate temperature (310 °C) by molecular beam epitaxy has been investigated using chemical lattice imaging and high resolution x-ray diffraction. The low-temperature-grown MQW is of high crystalline quality comparable to the standard-temperature-grown MQW. However, significant interface roughening and intermixing occurs at the quantum well heterointerface when the structures are annealed beyond 700 °C. The effective activation energy for interdiffusion is estimated as 0.24±0.07 eV. The structural properties observed here suggest that the excess arsenic associated with the low-temperature growth substantially enhances the diffusion of column III vacancies across an interface, which leads directly to intermixing of Al and Ga.