Determination of deep electron traps in GaAs by time-resolved capacitance measurement

Abstract

A useful technique of determining the energy levels and the spatial density distributions of multiple electron traps in semi-conductor has been developed using the time-resolved measurement of the Schottky barrier junction capacitance, and this technique has been applied to characterize the electron traps inn-GaAs. In the present technique, the energy levels are determined from single scan of temperature, and the density distributions are calculated from a set of capacitance-voltage relationships. Four traps which lay at 0.39, 0.73, 0.79, and 0.58 eV below the conduction band edge were observed in boat grown or vapor phase epitaxially grown crystals. Many layers which were obtained by a vapor phase epitaxial growth system with N₂ carrier gas were measured and it was found that almost all of them include the 0.73 eV and the 0.79 eV trap with the density between 1×10¹³ and 2×10¹⁵ cm⁻³.