Surface passivation of GaAsP

The use of gallium arsenide phosphide for light-emitting diodes and other semiconductor devices has generated a need for a good dielectric passivation technique for this III-V compound. Our development of GaAs1/2P1/2surface passivation processes has led us to study the thermal growth of films on this ternary III-V compound in oxygen, argon, and nitrogen, as well as the RF sputtering of Al2O3, SiO2, and Si3N4onto the surface. The thermal growth studies were complicated by the fact that films were grown on the surface even in the inert N2or argon atmospheres. This paper describes these processes and characterizes the passivating film quality with respect to physical quality (adherence and uniformity) and electrical quality (dielectric properties and pinhole defects) and its etching properties.