Hydrogen passivation of nonradiative defects in InGaAs/AlxGa1−xAs quantum wells

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Abstract
The effects of diffusion of monatomic hydrogen and deuterium in InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells were studied using photoluminescence (PL) and secondary-ion-mass spectroscopy. The multiquantum-well structures were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy and hydrogenated with a remote plasma. A significant increase in 77 K PL integrated intensity of bound excitons was observed after hydrogenation. This is attributed to the passivation of nonradiative recombination centers within InGaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells. A series of studies demonstrating the increase in passivation efficiency with increasing Al concentration in the barriers, the stability of the hydrogenation upon annealing to temperatures of up to and above 450 °C, the ratio of the deuterium concentration for samples with different barrier thicknesses, and the comparison of strained versus relaxed quantum wells, all strongly suggest that the passivated nonradiative recombination centers are interface defects. The stability of this hydrogen passivation at temperatures commonly used in device processing is particularly promising for device applications.