First stages of the InP(1 0 0) surfaces nitridation studied by AES, EELS and EPES

TL;DR

This study investigates the initial nitridation stages of InP(100) surfaces using AES, EELS, and EPES to optimize conditions for high-quality InN film growth, crucial for optoelectronic device fabrication.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of InP(100) surface nitridation using multiple spectroscopic techniques to optimize InN layer formation.

Findings

Surface cleaning via Ar+ bombardment creates metallic indium droplets.

Nitridation process parameters were optimized for InN layer growth.

Spectroscopic techniques effectively monitored surface composition changes.

Abstract

The nitrides of group III metals: AlN, GaN and InN are very important materials due to their applications for short wavelength opto-electronics (light-emitting diodes and laser diodes). It is essential for the realization of such novel devices to grow high-quality nitride single crystals. In this paper, we report the first stages of the InP(1 0 0) surfaces nitridation in order to grow high-quality nitride films. Indeed, the nitridation process is an important step in the growth of nitrides [J. Vac. Sci. Technol. A 17 (1999) 2194; Phys. Status Solidi A 176 (1999) 595]. Previous works [Synth. Met. 90 (1997) 2233; Appl. Phys. Lett. 63 (1993) 1957] have shown that in situ Ar+ ions bombardment is useful on the one hand to clean the surface, and on the other hand to create droplets of metallic indium in well-controlled quantity. Then the indium metallic enrichment of the surface, monitoring by elastic peak electron spectroscopy (EPES) and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) allows to prepare the III-V semiconductors surfaces to the nitridation step. The nitridated process has been performed with a high voltage plasma discharge cell and has been studied using quantitative Auger electron spectroscopy, elastic peak electron spectroscopy and electron energy loss spectroscopy (EELS), in order to optimize the conditions of InN layers formation.