Formation and passivation of defects in heterostructures with strained GaAs/InGaAs quantum wells as a result of treatment in a hydrogen plasma

The effect of processing heterostructures with GaAs/InGaAs quantum wells in the hydrogen plasma of an rf glow discharge on the photoluminescence spectrum and capacitive photovoltage of these structures is investigated. It is shown that strained quantum-well heterolayers hinder the diffusion of hydrogen and defects into the bulk, which causes the spatial distributions of recombination-active and passivated hydrogenic defect-like complexes in heterostructures, and the processes that create them, to differ appreciably from the same processes in uniform layers. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S1063-7826(98)01609-3].