Science in China Series E: Technological Sciences
© 2009 SCIENCE IN CHINA PRESS
Springer
Sci China Ser E-Tech Sci | Jan. 2009 | vol. 52 | no. 1 | 23-27
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Comparison of short period InAs/GaSb superlattices on
GaSb and GaAs substrates
GUO Jie
1,2†
, CHEN HuiJuan
2
, SUN WeiGuo
2
, HAO RuiTing
3
, XU YingQiang
3
& NIU ZhiChuan
3
1
Material School, NorthWest Polytechnical University, Xi’an 610000, China;
2
Luoyang Optical Electronics Center, Luoyang 471009, China;
3
Institute of Semiconductors, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100083, China
Type II superlattices (SLs) short period InAs(4ML)/GaSb(8ML) were grown by molecular-beam epitaxy
on lattice-mismatched GaAs substrates and on GaSb substrates. A smooth GaSb epilayer was formed
on GaAs substrates by inserting mulit-buffer layers including an interfacial misfit mode AlSb quantum
dot layer and AlSb/GaSb superlattices smooth layer. SLs grown on GaAs substrates (GaAs-based SLs)
showed well-resolved satellite peaks in XRD. GaSb-based SLs with better structural quality and
smoother surface showed strong photoluminescence at 2.55 μm with a full width at half maximum
(FWHM) of 20 meV, narrower than 31 meV of GaAs-based SLs. Inferior optical absorption of GaAs-
based SL was observed in the range of 2―3 μm. Photoresponse of GaSb-based SLs showed the cut-off
wavelength at 2.6 μm.
InAs/GaSb, superlattice, substrates, infrared detector
1 Introduction
Recently, type II superlattices based on InAs/GaSb was
considered as a candidate for the third generation IR
detectors. It becomes attractive in IR application due to
its good spatial uniformity and the ability to span cut-off
wavelength from 2 to 30 μm by changing the thickness
of the individual layer. Furthermore, the short period
InAs/GaSb superlattices was widely studied because it
can suppress Auger recombination rates and thereby
increase the carrier lifetime and realize the uncooled IR
detector
[1
―
3]
.
It is ideal to grow the SLs on lattice-matched GaSb
substrates. This allows the SLs structure to have a low
density of threading dislocations. However, due to the
lack of semi-insulating GaSb, ‘undoped’ substrates have
a strong free carrier absorption. In addition, the conduc-
tion increases the background noise, leading to degrada-
tion of the SL IR detector. There are other substrates
used for Antimonide SLs like Si
[4]
, Ge
[5]
and GaAs
[6,7]
.
The more mature GaAs substrates, which are cheaper,
more reproducible and semi-insulating, can be used for
InAs/GaSb SLs epitaxy. Unfortunately, a lattice mis-
match of ~7% exists between GaSb and GaAs. Strain
can be accommodated by misfit dislocations at the
GaSb/GaAs interface. This results in the propagation of
threading dislocations through the epilayers, initially
with a concentration of 10
10
cm
−2
. Numerous buffer
growth techniques have been attempted to eliminate the
threading dislocations. We report short period InAs
(4ML)/GaSb(8ML) SLs grown by molecular beam epi-
taxy (MBE) on (001) GaSb substrates and on GaAs sub-
strates. Low dislocations with a concentration of 10
5
cm
−2
can be obtained by multi-buffer layers on GaAs
substrates. The crystal qualities and optical properties of
GaAs- and GaSb-based SLs were compared concur-
rently.
Received July 20, 2008; accepted October 11, 2008
doi: 10.1007/s11431-008-0352-x
†
Corresponding author (email: jieggg1020@sina.com)
Supported by the the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.
60607016,60625405) and the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No.
2007CB936304)