High Resolution XRD Studies of Ion Beam Irradiated InGaAs/InP Multi Quantum Wells

Abstract

To investigate the interface modifications of multi quantum wells InGaAs/InP grown by metal organic chemical vapor deposition have been irradiated using swift heavy ions. Irradiation has been performed using 150 MeV Ag 12+ and 200 MeV Au 13+ ions. Both as-grown and irradiated samples were subjected to rapid thermal annealing at 500 and 700 0 C for 60s. Asgrown, irradiated and annealed samples were subjected to high resolution x-ray diffraction studies. Both symmetric and asymmetric scans were analyzed. The as-grown and Ag ion irradiated samples show sharp and highly ordered satellite peaks whereas, the Au ion irradiated samples show broad and low intense peaks. The higher order satellite peaks of the annealed samples vanished with increase of annealing temperature from 500 to 700 0 C, indicating mixing induced interfacial disorder. Annealing of irradiated samples show higher mixing and disorder and no higher order satellite peaks were observed. In comparison with as-grown samples no strain was observed after high temperature annealing of as-grown samples. Strain values calculated from the X-ray studies indicate that the irradiated samples have higher strain 0.2041% which has been reduced as a function of annealing as 0.1704% and 0.1509%. This indicates that the annealing induced mixing occurs maintaining the lattice parameter close to that of the substrate. In similar samples such results have been observed and reported in literature. The effect of electronic energy loss for interface mixing has been discussed in detail. The role of incident ion fluence in combination with the electronic energy loss has also been discussed.