Optical and structural properties of sulfur-doped ELOG InP on Si

Optical and structural properties of sulfur-doped epitaxial lateral overgrowth (ELOG) InP grown from nano-sized openings on Si are studied by room-temperature cathodoluminescence and cross-sectional transmission electron microscopy (XTEM). The dependence of luminescence intensity on opening orientation and dimension is reported. Impurity enhanced luminescence can be affected by the facet planes bounding the ELOG layer. Dark line defects formed along the [011] direction are identified as the facet planes intersected by the stacking faults in the ELOG layer. XTEM imaging in different diffraction conditions reveals that stacking faults in the seed InP layer can circumvent the SiO2 mask during ELOG and extend to the laterally grown layer over the mask. A model for Suzuki effect enhanced stacking fault propagation over the mask in sulfur-doped ELOG InP is constructed and in-situ thermal annealing process is proposed to eliminate the seeding stacking faults. (C) 2015 AIP Publishing LLC.