Nuclear science and optical studies of InAlGaP materials grown on GaAs by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition

Abstract

Quaternary III-V compound InAlGaP, especially In0.5(AlxGa1-x)0.5P which is lattice matched with GaAs, are important materials for visible red-green light emitting diode (LED) and laser diode (LD), solar cell and other optoelectronic and electronic device applications. A set of In0.5(AlxGa1-x)0.5P thin films on GaAs substrates with a wide range of x up to ~80%, were grown by low pressure metalorganic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) and studied by a variety of nuclear science and optical analytical techniques, including Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS), Raman scattering, photoluminescence (PL), Photoreflectance (PR) and FTIR. Temperature dependent PL-PR measurements over 10-300 K presented the band gap of these InAlGaP materials and variations with composition x and temperature (T). RBS was used to measure the microstructure of AlInGaP films, and through simulation, determine the film thickness and composition precisely. RBS measurement and simulation results indicate a quite fuzzy in the two interfaces, i.e. that there exists diffusion in the majority samples, especially between the AlInGaP layer and substrate. For a certain number of incoming He+ ions,we have proposed a way to determine the error bar by RBS successful. For this series of samples, the error bar of content is around ±1.5%. The error bar of thickness is around ±5.0nm. Different InAlGaP films with different composition and thickness may present different error bars. The results illuminate that RBS is a precise tool to analysis the microstructure of quaternary semiconductor AlInGaP/GaAs samples.