Irradiation and rapid thermal annealing were used to produce intermixing in GaAs/Al0.54Ga0.46As quantum wells with various thicknesses. Energy shifts of up to 0.20eV, with no apparent saturation, were observed at doses of up to about 4 x 1016/cm2. This was explained in terms of dilute irradiation damage and the evolution of discrete point defects during annealing. In comparison with heavy-ion irradiation, a high point-defect fraction in the case of light ions led to efficient intermixing; with large energy shifts. Although much of the proton energy loss occurred across the quantum wells, the generated defect density was low and good recovery of the photoluminescence intensity occurred during rapid thermal annealing.

H.H.Tan, J.S.Williams, C.Jagadish, P.T.Burke, M.Gal: Applied Physics Letters, 1996, 68[17], 2401-3