New technique for lifetime and surface/interface recombination velocity measurement in thin semiconductor layers

Author

Wang, Chih Hsin ; Neugroschel, Arnost

Author_Institution

Dept. of Electr. Eng., Florida Univ., Gainesville, FL, USA

Volume

39

Issue

3

fYear

1992

fDate

3/1/1992 12:00:00 AM

Firstpage

662

Lastpage

670

Abstract

A nondestructive photoluminescence (PL) method for measurement of the bulk lifetime τ and interface recombination velocity S is presented. The method is based on an exact analytical solution for the PL decay in a thin semiconductor layer, S and τ are obtained by analyzing the PL-decay response to a pulsed laser excitation for layers with different thicknesses. The decay analysis is done in the frequency domain, which improves accuracy and suppresses noise. The method is demonstrated on isotype double AlGaAs-GaAs-AlGaAs heterostructure, but it is also applicable for thin layers bounded by interfaces with different recombination velocities, such as SOI, GaAs-Si, and Si_1-xGe_x-Si systems

Keywords

carrier lifetime; electron-hole recombination; frequency-domain analysis; nondestructive testing; photoluminescence; semiconductor junctions; semiconductor technology; semiconductor thin films; AlGaAs-GaAs-AlGaAs; GaAs-Si; SOI; Si_1-xGe_x-Si; bulk lifetime; decay analysis; frequency domain; interface recombination velocity; isotype double heterostructure; nondestructive photoluminescence method; pulsed laser excitation; recombination velocity measurement; thin semiconductor layers; DH-HEMTs; Gallium arsenide; Material properties; Molecular beam epitaxial growth; Monitoring; Optical devices; Photoluminescence; Photovoltaic cells; Radiative recombination; Velocity measurement;

fLanguage

English

Journal_Title

Electron Devices, IEEE Transactions on

Publisher

ieee

ISSN

0018-9383

Type

jour

DOI

10.1109/16.123492

Filename

123492