Electrical and optical studies of dislocation filtering in InGaAs/GaAs strained-layer superlattices

Abstract
We report electrical transport and optical studies of the efficiency with which an In0.2Ga0.8As/GaAs strained‐layer superlattice (SLS) can filter threading dislocations generated in a thick In0.1 Ga0.9 As layer grown on GaAs. The electrical studies, the first of their kind, rely on a novel test structure which allows electrical characterization of just the top portion of the SLS, with the bottom portion acting as the dislocation filter. For optical characterization we detect dislocations directly by photoluminescence microscopy. The electrical results show that ∼3–6 periods of filtering are needed to attain high mobilities. The photoluminescence microimages show a small density of dislocations near the top of an eight‐period SLS but no dislocations for 11 or more periods. Filtering with In0.2Ga0.8As/GaAs SLS’s is more effective than with GaAs0.8P0.2/GaAs SLS’s, possibly because of larger interlayer differences in strain and elastic constants for the former.