Strain engineering in III-V photonic components through structuration of SiNx films

Abstract

We describe work to quantify the effects of structured dielectric thin films, such as SiNx, at the surface of III-V semiconductors, in terms of strain engineering with applications to photonic components such as waveguides and lasers. We show that the strain in the semiconductor can be engineered by controlling the stress in the dielectric thin film by tuning its deposition process. In the first part of this study, we describe how we can control the amount of this built-in mechanical stress, in the case of SiNx, over a large range, from highly tensile (300 MPa) to highly compressive (-800 MPa), using two different kinds of plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition reactors: a standard capacitively-coupled reactor with radio-frequency excitation and an electron cyclotron resonance reactor with micro-wave excitation. We focused on characterizing and understanding these thin films' optical and chemical bonding properties through spectroscopic ellipsometry and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. We have also studied their mechanical properties experimentally using the wafer curvature measurement technique, microstructure fabrication, and nano-indentation measurements. In the second part, we show accurate

Degree of Polarization of Cathodoluminescence from a GaAs Facet in the Vicinity of an SiN Stripe

“…[16]. The results for fits to GaAs are consistent with the strain dependence of DOP and ROP that is reported in [16] and displayed in this work as Equations ( 5) and (6).…”

“…The elastic constants for the SiN were taken to be E SiN = 270 GPa and ν SiN = 0.30. The value for E SiN is consistent with E SiN found for similarly prepared films [6] and a shallow but smooth minimum in plots of χ T versus E SiN was found at 270 GPa. No well was found for the plots of χ T versus ν SiN .…”

“…Strong interest exists for the characterization of devices and materials, with new approaches to extract material and device parameters [1]. Our interest lies in estimation of strain in III-V materials and devices by analysis of the degree of polarization (DOP) of luminescence, for which engagement is strong and current [2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]. The DOP of luminescence from InP and GaAs, and related compounds, is a sensitive function of the strain in these III-V materials [11][12][13].…”

A Comparative Study of a:SiCN:H Thin Films Fabricated with Acetylene and Methane

“…The measured hardness of similar films fabricated with different deposition conditions, including deposition temperature, different hydrocarbon sources and deposition systems provided values ranging from 7.2 to 23.4 GPa. 35,36 The values of hardness, elastic modulus as well as the deposition rate and optical constants are given in Table III.…”

Degree of Polarization of Cathodoluminescence from a (100) GaAs Substrate with SiN Stripes

“…Most previous work has been analysis of the DOP of PL or electroluminescence [13,17,[27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. CL offers better spatial resolution than PL.…”