Low-temperature spectrally resolved cathodoluminescence study of degradation in opto-electronic and microelectronic devices

This study reports on the microcharacterization of devices for optoelectronic and for microelectronic applications using low temperature (T = 5 and 77 K) spectrally resolved cathodoluminescence (SCL). The mechanisms leading to compositional inhomogeneities in the regrowth regions of InP-based butt-coupled laser-waveguide devices for semiconducting optical amplifiers (SOAs) and for defect generation in the active and cladding layers of GaAs based pump lasers for erbium-doped optical fibre amplifiers (EDFAs) were studied. Beryllium outdiffusion in the base regions of GaAs-based heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) after bias ageing was also studied. By comparing the CL results with TEM, SIMS and HRXRD studies and with the existing literature, the observed growth and operation induced defects were attributed, respectively, to the following mechanisms: recombination-enhanced defect glide (REDG) in the pump lasers, recombination enhanced impurity diffusion (REID) in the HBTs and electrostatically induced growth flux instabilities in the butt-coupled laser-waveguide devices.