Annealing effects on the nanoscale indium and nitrogen distribution in Ga(NAs) and (GaIn)(NAs) quantum wells

III∕V semiconductors containing dilute amounts of nitrogen are metastable and need to be thermally treated after growth to optimize optoelectronic properties. The influence of thermal annealing on the nitrogen depth profile in metal organic vapor phase epitaxygrown $Ga(NAs)∕GaAs$ as well as $(GaIn)(NAs)∕GaAs$ heterostructures is examined on a nanometer scale by combining several high resolution transmission electron microscopy techniques, also with Rutherford backscattering spectrometry. Annealing conditions, which are optimized for quaternary alloys with respect to photoluminescence intensity, do not result in element redistribution for the In containing material. Contrary to the quaternary material, the result of annealing the ternary Ga(NAs) is a pronounced pileup of the nitrogen profile without any out diffusion of nitrogen. These findings have important influence on device structures, which often contain Ga(NAs) barriers for strain-compensation purposes together with (GaIn)(NAs) active regions. In the light of metastability considerations for the ternary and quaternary alloy, one can conclude that the In contained in the quaternary material stabilizes the material and suppresses phase separation. Consequently (GaIn)(NAs) is more stable than its ternary counterpart Ga(NAs).