In this work, different dielectric caps were deposited on the GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well ͑QW͒ structures followed by rapid thermal annealing to generate different degrees of interdiffusion. Deposition of a layer of Ga x O y on top of these dielectric caps resulted in significant suppression of interdiffusion. In these samples, it was found that although the deposition of Ga x O y and subsequent annealing caused additional injection of Ga into the SiO 2 layer, Ga atoms were still able to outdiffuse from the GaAs QW structure during annealing, to generate excess Ga vacancies. The suppression of interdiffusion with the presence of Ga vacancies was explained by the thermal stress effect which suppressed Ga vacancy diffusion during annealing. It suggests that Ga x O y may therefore be used as a mask material in conjunction with other dielectric capping layers in order to control and selectively achieve impurity-free vacancy disordering.