Admittance spectroscopy analysis on the interfacial defect levels in the surface-activated bonding of GaAs

Room-temperature surface-activated wafer bonding between bare III-V semiconductor surfaces has become a key technology for high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells, where the reduction of interfacial electrical resistance is of crucial importance for achieving highest efficiency. In the bonding process, surface cleaning using fast atom beam (FAB) of noble gas elements is vital for successful bonding but it damages the surface, resulting in numerous crystal defects at the bonded interface and increases electrical resistance. We here developed quantitative evaluation of such defects introduced by FAB treatment. The surface of n-GaAs was treated with the FAB using Ne, Ar and Kr, and Au Schottky electrodes were formed on the surfaces. Capacitance of a Schottky diode as a function of both probe frequency and DC bias allowed us to characterize both energy depth of the defects and their density profile along the physical depth from the GaAs surface. The results indicated that atoms with the smaller diameter generate high-density defects to the deeper region from the surface. When the defect density exceeding the doping level of GaAs spreads to wider than 5 nm, significant Schottky characteristics appears in the interfacial current-voltage characteristics, as suggested by simulations. Such a tendency was semi-quantitatively in good agreement with the measured current-voltage characteristics of the n-GaAs/n-GaAs bonded interfaces treated with the FAB of Ne, Ar and Kr, suggesting that the capacitance analysis of the FAB-treated surface provides us a direction for optimizing the surface- activated bonding process using FAB.