Investigation of GaAs Wafer Surface Blistering by Hydrogen Implantation

The surface blistering of the 6 times 10¹⁶ cm^-2 dose hydrogen ion implanted GaAs wafers were investigated as a function of temperature and time during the rapid thermal annealing, as well as the implant energy. For the 50keV implanted samples, the blisters (microcavities) start to form and crack at a temperature larger than 300degC. The blister density increases rapidly with increasing the annealing temperature at first, and then saturates at temperature larger than 500degC. The size of craters, which are the cracked microcavities, seems to be independent of the annealing temperature. With increasing the implant energy, the critical temperature to trigger blistering increases, meanwhile, the blister density decreases and the average crater size increases. The results of this study may be useful to optimize the Smart-Cut process for the GaAs/Si fabrication