AlxOy induced intermixing in GaAs/AlGaAs quantum wells

Quantum well interdiffusion has been widely studied in recent years due to potential applications in optoelectronics. The main advantages with the quantum well intermixing technique is the ability to selectively intermix parts of an already grown wafer to shift the excitonic energy. This can be used to integrate active and passive quantum devices without the need for regrowth or patterned growth. Commonly Impurity-Free interdiffusion (IFID) is mostly used for fabrication of active devices, due to the low defect density present after processing, and the lower degradation of the material, this is usually achieved by deposition of a dielectric on the surface of the wafer. Very recently, it was observed that IFID can be achieved by using laterally oxidized AlAs layers. These layers are commonly used for current confinement apertures in VCSELs and Edge emitters. In this paper we present results which show a systematic study of the effect of Al_xO_y induced interdiffusion