Structural and Transport Properties of Thin InAs Layers Grown on InxAl1-xAs Metamorphic Buffers

TL;DR

This study demonstrates the epitaxial growth of high-quality thin InAs layers on InxAl1-xAs buffers, analyzing their structural and transport properties to enable scalable quantum device fabrication.

Contribution

It introduces a scalable method for growing high-quality InAs layers on insulating buffers, suitable for quantum device applications.

Findings

High crystal quality of InAs layers confirmed by X-ray diffraction.

Transport measurements show favorable carrier mobility and concentration.

InAs layers on buffers are insulating at cryogenic temperatures.

Abstract

Indium Arsenide is a III-V semiconductor with low electron effective mass, a small band gap, strong spin-orbit coupling, and a large g-factor. These properties and its surface Fermi level pinned in the conduction band make InAs a good candidate for developing superconducting solid-state quantum devices. Here, we report the epitaxial growth of very thin InAs layers with thicknesses ranging from 12.5 nm to 500 nm grown by Molecular Beam Epitaxy on InxAl1-xAs metamorphic buffers. Differently than InAs substrates, these buffers have the advantage of being insulating at cryogenic temperatures, which allows for multiple device operations on the same wafer and thus making the approach scalable. The structural properties of the InAs layers were investigated by high-resolution X-ray diffraction, demonstrating the high crystal quality of the InAs layers. Furthermore, their transport properties, such as total and sheet carrier concentration, sheet resistance, and carrier mobility, were measured in the van der Pauw configuration at room temperature. A simple conduction model was employed to quantify the surface, bulk, and interface contributions to the overall carrier concentration and mobility.