Study of degradation mechanisms in compound semiconductors bades devices by SEM-cathodoluminescence

This papers reports on the microcharacterization of devices for optoelectronic and high-speed electronic applications by spectrally resolved cathodoluminescence. The advantages offered by the high lateral resolution, monochromatic imaging and depth resolved spectral analysis of the technique are presented. In particular, InP based semiconducting optical amplifiers and GaAs based pump lasers for optical fiber communications am characterized from the point of view of compositional inhomogeneities and defect generation in the active regions. GaAs based heterojunction bipolar transistors and high electron mobility transitors are studied to respectively reveal Be outdiffusion from the base and break down walkout after bias aging. GaAs based solar cells are also investigated to show the correlation between dislocations and impurity gettering. Finally the limits of the technique are briefly discussed.