A comparative study of p-type diffusion in III-V compound semiconductors

In this paper, the different behavior of zinc diffusion in GaAs and InP is described. The diffusion technique used in this study was a semi-sealed quartz bottle containing diffusion charges and GaAs or InP wafers. The basic requirement for zinc diffusion in these materials is to provide an overpressure ambient so that decomposition at the diffusion temperature can be avoided. For InP, a small amount of InP powder along with zinc in the diffusion charge was required in order to avoid the decomposition at the diffusion temperature of about 600/spl deg/C. For GaAs, however, no GaAs powder was needed in the diffusion charge. Only pure zinc was required for producing heavily doped P-layer at the diffusion temperature of about 500/spl deg/C.