Measuring low doping level and short carrier lifetime in indium arsenide with a contactless terahertz technique at room temperature

Abstract

Non-destructive, reliable, and accurate measurements of low doping levels and carrier lifetimes in small direct-bandgap semiconductors such as indium arsenide (InAs) at room temperature are challenging due to intrinsic limitations of conventional experimental techniques. In this article, we introduce a contactless optical-terahertz (THz) pump–probe technique in a continuous-wave regime measuring low doping levels in the 1015−1016cm−3 range and lifetimes down to 8 ns at room temperature in InAs. We show that a single-parameter material model can be used to retrieve the free carrier density from THz transmission measurements of InAs layers. Additionally, we show that lifetime of photogenerated excess carriers can be measured by modulating this carrier density using an amplitude-modulated optical pump.