Thermal processing of strained InGaAs/GaAs quantum well heterostructures bonded to Si via an epitaxial lift-off technique

We have investigated the effects of thermal cycling on the optical properties of In0.2Ga0.8As/GaAs single quantum well films bonded to Si(001) via the epitaxial lift-off technique, The optical and structural quality of the bonded films were monitored using cathodoluminescence (CL) imaging and spectroscopy. The films were stable through the temperature range (500-700 degrees C) used in normal InxGa1-xAs device processing. However, annealing at temperatures greater than similar to 700 degrees C resulted in layer intermixing accompanied by a blue-shift in the CL peak energy. The shifts in the CL peak energy were modeled by considering In-Ga interdiffusion at the interface and solving the Schrodinger equation using appropriate band profiles for this region. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.