Abstract

Impurity Free Vacancy Disordering (IFVD) is a post-growth means of cation intermixing in binary semiconductor heterostructures that can be used to produce lateral modulation of the constituent material without the need for deep etching and regrowth procedures, and thus has enormous potential for the integration of such features as optical waveguides and quantum confined heterostructures into planar devices. IFVD is performed by coating the semiconductor surface with SiO₂ or with SiO₂:P prior to an anneal stage, resulting in distinct intermixing-enhanced (IE) and intermixing-suppressed (IS) regions, respectively, due to a difference in the associated rates of cation out-diffusion.

© 2000 IEEE