Luminescent p-GaAs grown by zinc ion doped MBE

Abstract

Low‐energy zinc ions have been incorporated in growing MBE GaAs layers producing heavily doped p‐type material. As‐grown layers retain a substantial amount of radiation damage as indicated by the absence of photoluminescence and low hole mobilities. A postgrowth anneal yields layers with low‐temperature luminescence and mobilities comparable to zinc doped LPE epitaxial layers. Annealed layer quality does not depend on substrate growth temperature or ion energy over the ranges 580–650 °C and 100–3000 eV, respectively. The measured zinc ion sticking coefficient has a value of ∼50% and depends only weakly on ion energy. The data suggest that the sticking coefficients are enhanced by a simple ion burial mechanism and not by an electrostatic attraction between the ion and surface atoms.