INSITU DEFINITION OF SEMICONDUCTOR STRUCTURES BY SELECTIVE AREA GROWTH AND ETCHING

Selective area growth (etching) by low-pressure organometallic chemical vapor deposition (LP-OMCVD) is utilized to intentionally modulate the local growth (etch) rate by choosing the pattern of dielectric-masked areas, thereby defining III-V semiconductor structures in situ. This technique is applied to tune the emission wavelength of a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well structure, and to obtain InP/InGaAs superlattice structures tapered in thickness with growth rate increases as high as 800%, suitable for integrated optics applications. In contrast, selective deposition by organometallic molecular beam epitaxy (OMMBE) does not produce growth rate enhancements, thereby preventing similar in situ definition schemes but allowing to integrate structures with optimized nominal thicknesses.