Pergamon

Solid State Communications,

Vol. 104, No. 12, pp. 717-721, 1997 6 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 003s1098/97 $17.00+.00

PII: SOO38-1098(97)00205-6

ELECTRIC

FIELDS SEPARATION

BY PHASE SELECTION IN MODULATION PHOTOREFLECTANCE

SPECTROSCOPY

OF

Y.C. Wang,* W.Y. Chou, W.C. Hwang and J.S. Hwang National Cheng Kung University, Department of Physics, Tainan, Taiwan

(Received

10 May 1997; accepted

15 October 1997 by R. Phillips)

The built-in electric fields in a MBE grown d-doped GaAs homojunction have been investigated by the techniques of photoreflectance and phase suppression. Two Franz-Keldysh oscillation features originating from two different fields in the structure superimpose with each other in the photoreflectance spectrum. By properly selecting the reference phase of the lock-in amplifier, one of the features can be suppressed, thus enabling us to determine the electric fields from two different regions. We have demonstrated that only two PR spectra, in-phase and out-phase components, are needed to find the phase angle which suppresses one of the features. The electric field in the top layer is 3.5 _+ 0.2 X 10 V cm-, which is in good agreement with theoretical calculation. The electric field in the buffer layer is 1.2 + 0.1 X lo4 V cm-, which suggests the existence of interface states at the buffer/substrate interface. 0 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd

1. INTRODUCTION Modulation spectroscopy has become an important technique in characterization of bulk semiconductors, semiconductor thin films and heterostructures [l-5]. It provides an accurate method for determining the energy gap [l, 21, quantum transition [l, 41, built-in surface or interface electric field [6, 71 as well as doping concentrations in these systems. Photoreflectance (PR) is a particularly useful tool for device characterization since it is non-destructive and contactless, requires no special mounting of sample and can be performed in a variety of transparent ambients [2, 41. Recently, there has been a growing interest in the applications of PR to the investigation of real devices such as InGaAs/GaAs [5] and GaAs/GaAlAs [6, 71 heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT), InAlAs/InP [8, 93 and GaInP/GaAs heterojunctions [lo]. A drawback of modulation spectroscopy is its complex line shape. This makes quantitative interpretation extremely difficult. Commonly, to solve this problem, a series of spectra are taken after step by step etchings. This approach, however, decreases the

* Also at Department Military Academy,

of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Fengshan, Taiwan, R.O.C. 717

efficacy of PR as a nondestructive method. Nevertheless, in certain cases, PR can be spatially (depth) selective and thus can probe specific regions of a sample. For example, by changing the wavelength of the pump beam in PR or using differential PR [ll], it is possible to perform nondestructive depth profiling to separate the mixed features. Since modulation spectroscopy is an AC method representing the optical response of the system to the modulating parameter, there is also important information embedded in the temporal response, such as reference phase and modulation frequency. These parameters can also be used to separate mixed features. For example, Krystek et al. [12] have reported a frequency dependent study of PR signals from the collector and emitter regions of a GaAs/GaAlAs heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) and found the time constant of the emitter region is more than an order of magnitude greater than that of the collector region. Zhou et al. [ 131 have reported a PR investigation of near interface properties in semiinsulation InP substrates and epitaxial grown InGaAs and InAlAs. By properly choosing the reference phase, they were able to separate Franz-Keldysh (FKO) features from exciton peaks. A similar method has been used by Lipsanen et aZ. [14] and Alperovich et al. [15].

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In recent years, the capability of confining in a very narrow region is of great interest for many device applications. The &function-like doped structures have received a great deal of interest as a means of obtaining two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) system. The &doping technique represents the ultimate control of a dopant profile and certainly will play an important role in future quantum-electronic and quantum-photonic device research. In this report, PR was employed to investigate the built-in electric fields in a (1 0 0) d-doped GaAs homojunction. There are two Franz-Keldysh oscillation features originating from two different fields existing simultaneously in the buffer layer and top layer of this structure. By properly selecting the reference phase, we extracted one of the features from the spectrum and thus determine both fields.

In PR, the surface electric field is modulated through the photo injection of electron-hole pairs via a chopped incident laser beam. The lineshape of the PR signal, AR/R, is directly related to the perturbed complex dielectric function. For a moderate electric field, the PR spectrum exhibits a series of oscillations, termed Franz-Keldysh oscillations (FKOs). A materials surface or interface electric field can be determined by the position of FKO extrema, which are given by [7, 191 + n7r = (4/3)[(E n -E g)/~=I!J)]~~ 0 7 (1)

where n, E,, E, and 0 are, respectively, the index of the nth extrema, the energy gap, the photon energy of the nth extrema and an arbitrary phase factor. The quantity, liQ, is the electro-optical energy, defined as (hQ3 = (el=1F)~18~~, (2)

2. EXPERIMENT The S(N+) structure used in this study was grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) [15, 161. A 0.6 pm thick undoped GaAs buffer layer was fabricated on an undoped liquid-encapsulated Czochraski (LEC) (1 0 0) semi-insulated GaAs substrate. Next, a S(N+) doping layer of density 1.5 X lOI cm- was grown on top of the buffer layer and subsequently followed by a 200 A thick undoped GaAs top layer. The host growth temperature was kept constant at Ts = 58OC, except during the growth of the b-doping layer when it was reduced to 450C. The thickness was determined by the growth conditions, the growth rate is 1 pm h-. A standard arrangement of photoreflectance apparatus [17] were used in this study. The probe beam consisted of an Xe lamp and a quarter meter monochromator combination. An He-Ne laser served as the pumping beam. In order to eliminate the photovoltaic effect [ 181, the probe beam was defocused on the sample and kept below 15 PW cm- and the pump beam was kept below 20 @W cm-. The detection scheme consisted of an InGaAs photodetector and a lock-in amplifier. The modulated reflectance signals, AR/R, were processed by the lock-in amplifier and PC computer. All measurements were performed at room temperature (300 K) and at a modulation frequency of 0, = 200 Hz. There are two Franz-Keldysh oscillation features in the PR spectrum originating from two different electric fields existing simultaneously in the buffer layer and top layer of the sample. By properly selecting the reference phase of lock-in amplifier, we extracted one of the features from the spectrum and thus determined both electric fields.

where e and p represent, respectively, the electron charge and the reduced interband electron and heavy hole pair effective mass in the direction of electric field F, which was (1 0 0) in our study. The PR modulation under a square wave pump is not between two finite electric fields, but rather a complex wave form [20]. The output from a lock-in amplifier is the fundamental harmonic response,

where T is the period, ql~~~~ the reference phase with is respect to the phase of the chopped laser beam &,f = 0 and al2 give the in-phase and the quadrature components of the lock-in amplifier output, respectively. Under small modulation, equation (3) can be simplified to

x cm (6.q - A>,

(4)

where Z@, Fi) is the lineshape at Q, = 0 for signal from the ith region, Fi is the electric field, ri is the characteristic time constant and Ci is the phase delay given by & = - arctan(2nh2,rj). (5)

If the time constants associated with various regions of the sample are different, equation (4) yields a different lineshape for the in-phase and out-phase signals. For example a slower signal (larger 7-J is more pronounced in the quadrature components, while a faster one is more pronounced in the in-phase component. Equation (4) also shows the possibility of

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output, respectively. Therefore, the output in a lock-in amplifier can be represented as a vector in the reference phase space. Illustrated in Fig. 1 is a vector representation of two signals (FKO-A and FKO-B) with different phase delay. The vector sum of them is shown by FKO-AB. Its projection on x 0, axis) represent the in-phase (out-phase) signal. In a new reference phase frame (4,.,f> with OX perpendicular to FKO-B, the projection of FKO-B on OX is zero while FKO-A still has significant projection on OX. Therefore, FKO-B can be extracted. It is important to note that it is not necessary to take many spectra at different phases to find this angle ($,,r>. In fact, only two measurements (in-phase and quadrature) are enough. One can use equation (6) to generate a series of spectra at various angles, examine them and pick one which suppresses one of the components. The surface potential barrier V, can be determined from [21, 221
V, = Fd f kTlq + SCC, (7)

Fig. 1. Vector representation of the two FKO signals with different phase delay. suppressing one of the features (from the ith region) by selecting (&ef - 4i) = n/2 and to extract the other features (from the jth region) as long as rj # ri. It can be proven that WE, Q,, &ef) = W-5
R +

where d, k, T, q and SCC are thickness of the undoped top layer, Boltzman constant, temperature, electron charge and the space charge layer correction term, respectively. 4. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION Two uniform electric fields FA and FB exist simultaneously in the buffer layer and in the undoped top layer, respectively. Shown in Fig. 2(a) is the in-phase PR spectrum from the sample. Two FKOs with different periods superimpose with each other in the spectrum. The quadrature component is plotted in Fig. 2(b). Although this spectrum still contains two superimposed
I I

Q,, 0)
R

cos (4&f)

AR(E, %,, ~12) sin (bf), R

(6)

where AR(E, iI&, 0)/R and AR(E, Q,, 1rl2)lR are the in-phase and the quadrature components of the lock-in
I I

I OR I-

t=KOB

-t

(a)ln-phase

(c) Rotate 67 (computer generated)

1.6

1.8

2.a

Photon Energy (eV) Fig. 2. Room temperature photoreflectance spectra from the &doped GaAs sample. (a) in phase signal; (b) out phase signal; (c) computer generated spectrum at a phase angle of drcf = 67, (d) experimental result from a re-scan at the same phase angle.

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0.008

0.04

0.004

0.00

0.000 6'

FKO index n
Fig. 3. The quantity (4/37r) (E,, - J!$,)~ as a function of index n. Triangle: FKO-A; square: FKO-B. The solid lines are least-squares fits to a linear function. FKOs, the short period oscillation is much less noticeable. Located in the vicinity of 1.42 eV is the excitonic feature. Comparing the in-phase spectrum with the out-phase spectrum, the excitonic feature has opposite signs in the two spectra. Shown in Fig. 2(c) by a dashed line is a computer generated spectrum at &ef = 67 using the in-phase and out-phase spectra of Fig. 2(a) and (b). In this case, the signal of the longer period FKOs disappears and the shorter period FKOs remain. Also shown in Fig. 2(d) by a solid line is the experimental result from a re-scan at a phase angle of & = 67, which is in good agreement with the calculated lineshape. We designate this feature as FKO-A. Using the in-phase and out-phase spectra again, we found that FKO-A is suppressed at phase angle +ref = 85. In this case the longer period FKOs remain and we designate it as FKO-B. From the reference phase which suppressed FKO-A (FKO-B), we found that the phase delay for FKO-A (FKO-B) is 4A = -5 ($A = -23). The characteristic time constant for FKO-A and FKO-B were deduced from equation (5) to be 70 ps and 340 ps, respectively. These time constants are related to the limiting processes of discharge and recharge of the surface/interface states, such as thermionic emission over the potential barriers, emission of charges from the surface/interface states/ traps, etc. Since the density of the interface states in an MBE grown sample is typically less than the,density of the surface states, we assign that fast process (FKO-A) to the buffer region, while the slower process (FKO-B) to the top undoped region. Plotted in Fig. 3 by triangle (squares) is the quantity (4/37r)(E,, - Eg)32 as a function of index n for the related FKO-A (FKO-B). The solid lines are least-squares fits to a linear function

1 undoped 1 b top layer

buffer

layer

surface

d 14
2OQA 0.6 mm

u
Fig. 4. Illustration

of the energy band diagram of &doped GaAs sample.

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[equation (l)] which yield the value of hS2 and hence the electric fields. The values deduced by equation (2) are 1.220.1 X104and3.5rt0.2X 105Vcm-forFKO-A and FKO-B, respectively. The surface potential barrier V, that can be determined from equation (7) is 0.71 eV indicating that the surface Fermi level is pinned at the midgap, which is in good agreement with the reported values. From the field in the buffer layer, we calculated the Fermi level position at the buffer/SI-substrate interface and found it is at 0.75 eV below the conduction band edge. This position is lower than the Cr impurity level position (0.63 eV below conduction band) in the SI-substrate interface. The Fermi level pinning at the buffer/substrate interface implies the existence of interface states at this interface. The energy band diagram of the (1 0 0) a-doped GaAs structure, derived from above results, is shown as Fig. 4. 5. CONCLUSIONS In conclusion, we have used the reference phase of the lock-in amplifier and phase suppression technique to resolve the two FKO features. We have demonstrated that only two PR spectra, in-phase and quadrature components, are needed to find the phase angle which suppresses one of the features enabling us to determine the electric fields from the two regions unambiguously. The electric field in the top layer is 3.5 -t- 0.2 X 10 V cm-, which is in good agreement with theoretical calculations. The electric field in the buffer layer is 1.2 + 0.1 X IO4 V cm-, which suggests the existence of interface states at the buffer/substrate interface. Acknowledgements-This work was supported by National Science Council of the Republic of China under Contract No. NCS 85-2112-M-006-008. REFERENCES Pollak, F.H. and Glembocki, I., in Proc. Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers, Vol. 946, p. 2. SPIE, Bellingham, 1988. Bottka, N., Gaskill, D.K., Sillmon, R.S., Henry, R. and Glosser, R., J. Electron. Mater., 17, 1988, 161. Bhattacharya, R.N., Shen, H., Parayanthal, P., Pollak, F.H., Coutts, T. and Aharoni, H., Phys. Rev., B37, 1988,4044.

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