Fermi-level effect on group III atom interdiffusion in III-V compounds: bandgap heterogeneity and low silicon-doping
Heavy n-doping enhanced disordering of GaAs based III-V semiconductor superlattice or quantum well layers, as well as the diffusion of Si in GaAs have been previously explained by the Fermi-level effect model with the triply-negatively-charged group III lattice vacancies identified to be the responsible point defect species. These vacancies have a thermal equilibrium concentration proportional to the cubic power of the electron concentration n, leading to the same dependence of the layer disordering rate. In this paper, in addition, we take into account also the electric field effect produced by the material bandgap heterogeneity and/or hetero-junctions. In heavily n-doped or long time annealing cases, this effect is negligible. At low n-doping levels and for short annealing times, the layer disordering rate can be enhanced or reduced by this effect. Available experimental results of low Si-doped and very short-time annealed samples have been satisfactorily fitted using the Fermi-level effect model.
