Effects of rapid thermal annealing conditions on GaInNAs band gap blueshift and photoluminescence intensity

We have studied the effects of various conditions of rapid thermal annealing (RTA) on 10nm GaInNAs∕GaAs single quantum wells (SQWs) with fixed indium concentration and increasing nitrogen content to obtain photoluminescence (PL) in the telecom wavelength regime of 1.3 and 1.5μm. Specifically, we analyzed the results of annealing for a fixed short time but at different temperatures and for longer times at a fixed temperature. In all experiments, InGaAs SQWs with the same In concentration were used as references. For both RTA conditions, the well-known blueshift of the band gap energy and the PL intensity improvement show trends that reveal that these are unrelated effects. At high RTA temperatures the PL efficiency reaches a maximum and then drops independently of N content. On the contrary, the blueshift experiences a rapid increase up to 700°C (strong blueshift regime) and it saturates above this temperature (weak blueshift regime). Both these blueshift regimes are related to the nitrogen content in the SQWs but in different ways. In the strong blueshift regime, we could obtain activation energy for the blueshift process in the range of 1.25eV, which increases with N content. Analysis with high-resolution x-ray diffraction (HRXRD) shows that the blueshift experienced in this regime is not due to a stoichiometric change in the QW. In the weak blueshift regime, the blueshift, which is only partly due to In outdiffusion, saturates more slowly the higher the N content. Annealing at the same temperature (600°C) for a longer time shows that the blueshift saturates earlier than the PL intensity and that samples with higher nitrogen experience a larger blueshift. Only a small In outdiffusion for annealing at high temperatures (>650°C) and long duration was observed. However, this modest stoichiometric change does not explain the large blueshift experienced by the GaInNAs SQWs. We conclude that the mechanism responsible for the drastic blueshift after annealing is related to the N content in the QW, while the improvement in PL integrated intensity is uniquely related to the annealing conditions.