Contactless electromodulation and surface photovoltage spectroscopy for the nondestructive, room temperature characterization of wafer-scale III–V semiconductor device structures

This paper will review the use of the contactless methods of photoreflectance, contactless electroreflectance, and surface photovoltage spectroscopy for the nondestructive, room temperature characterization of a wide variety of wafer-scale III–V semiconductor device structures. Some systems that will be discussed include heterojunction bipolar transistors (including determination of collector and emitter doping levels, alloy composition, and dc current gain factor, pseudomorphic GaAlAs/InGaAs/GaAs high electron mobility transistors (including the determination of the composition, width, and two-dimensional electron gas density in the channel), edge emitting lasers [InGaAsP/InP (including the detection of p-dopant interdiffusion), graded index of refraction separate confinement heterostructure GaAlAs/GaAs/InGaAs], and vertical-cavity surface-emitting lasers (determination of fundamental conduction to heavy-hole excitonic transition and cavity mode). These methods are already being used by more than a dozen industries world-wide for the production-line qualification of these device structures.