Laser structures, with InGaAs quantum wells which were about 1.85 below the surface, were implanted with ions that had energies of up to 8.6MeV. Intermixing of the quantum wells, during rapid thermal annealing, was monitored via changes in the energy, line-width and intensity of the photoluminescence peaks from the quantum wells. When the defects had to diffuse mainly through Al0.71Ga0.29As, these quantities were closely related, for short annealing times, to the predicted vacancy generation and ion deposition at the depth of the quantum well before annealing. This suggested that the defect diffusion length in AlGaAs and/or GaAs was quite low. When diffusion occurred mainly through InP, the photoluminescence data correlated well with the calculated total number of vacancies that were created in the sample. This suggested that defect diffusion was very efficient in InP.

P.J.Poole, S.Charbonneau, G.C.Aers, T.E.Jackman, M.Buchanan, M.Dion, R.D.Goldberg, I.V.Mitchell: Journal of Applied Physics, 1995, 78[4], 2367-71