Data were presented which demonstrated that the surface encapsulant and As4 over-pressure strongly affected Si diffusion in GaAs and AlxGa1-xAs, and were important parameters in impurity-induced layer disordering. An increase in the As4 over-pressure resulted in an increase in the diffusion depth in the case of GaAs, and a decrease in the diffusion depth for AlxGa1-xAs. In addition, the band-edge exciton was observed in absorption on an AlxGa1-xAs-GaAs superlattice that was diffused with Si and was converted to bulk crystal AlyGa1-yAs via impurity-induced layer disordering. In contrast, the exciton was not observed during absorption on GaAs that was diffused with Si, in spite of the high degree of compensation. The data indicated that the Si diffusion process and the properties of the diffused material were different for GaAs and AlxGa1-xAs-GaAs superlattices which were converted into uniform AlyGa1-yAs (where y was between 0 and 1) via impurity-induced layer disordering with amphoteric dopant Si.

L.J.Guido, W.E.Plano, D.W.Nam, N.Holonyak, J.E.Baker, R.D.Burnham, P.Gavrilovic: Journal of Electronic Materials, 1988, 17[1], 53-6