Effect of post-growth annealing on patterned GaAs on silicon

Abstract
We have investigated the effect of post-growth thermal annealing on the defect surface of patterned GaAs on silicon. Significant improvements in defect structure of the patterned GaAs were observed by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) after short anneal times (15 min) at temperatures as low as 750 °C. At anneal temperatures of 950 °C, long-range single-crystal lateral regrowth of the original polycrystalline GaAs deposited over the amorphous patterning mask was observed. Micro-Raman spectroscopic characterization of the GaAs grown on the oxide/nitride mask corroborated the TEM results by showing a significant improvement in the crystalline quality of patterned GaAs on silicon following post-growth annealing.