Passivation of deep level states caused by misfit dislocations in InGaAs on patterned GaAs

Deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and cathodoluminescence (CL) were used to study the hydrogen passivation of misfit dislocations in In_0.06Ga_0.94As/GaAs heterostructures. The CL observations indicate that hydrogen plasma exposure passivates most, but not all, of the dark line defects existing in the specimen prior to hydrogenation. The concentration of deep level defect states that cannot be passivated is below the detection limit of the DLTS instrument (approximately 4×10¹² cm⁻³). We find the passivation is stable after anneals at temperatures as high as 600 °C, indicating that hydrogen passivation of misfit dislocations is at least as stable as that of the isolated point defect studied previously with DLTS [W. C. Dautremont‐Smith, J. C. Nabity, V. Swaminathan, M. Stavola, J. Chevalier, C. W. Tu, and S. J. Pearton, Appl. Phys. Lett. 49 1098 (1986)].