Experimental and computer simulation studies of diffusion mechanisms on the arsenic sublattice of gallium arsenide

Interdiffusion experiments with GaAsP/GaAs and GaAsSb/GaAs superlattice samples were performed at various temperatures and arsenic vapor pressures. From the depth-concentration profiles effective diffusion coefficients were calculated. The dependence of these effective diffusion coefficients on the ambient arsenic pressure led to the conclusion that the interdiffusion process is governed by a substitutional-interstitial diffusion mechanism. The good agreement of the effective diffusion coefficients of the GaAsP/GaAs and GaAsSb/GaAs samples with each other and the agreement with arsenic self-diffusion data from the literature is an indication that phosphorus and antimony have good tracer properties to investigate arsenic self diffusion. Comparing our results with sulfur in-diffusion experiments from the literature we conclude that the kick-out mechanism governs self-diffusion on the arsenic sublattice in GaAs. Our results are in contradiction to arsenic self-diffusion experiments which indicated a vacancy mechanism. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics.