Chemomechanical Polishing and Etching of GaAs : In and GaAs in Aqueous Solutions of NaOCl

High performance GaAs integrated circuits and optoelectric devices require homogeneous dislocation free semi-insulating (SI) GaAs crystals. Recently, the alloying of GaAs with In has attracted a great deal of attention as a means of reducing the dislocation density. Several works have been already published on the bulk properties of indium alloyed GaAs crystals. However, very little is known about the physicochemical properties of the GaAs:In surface. Recently many scientific programs and research works have been aimed at a better understanding and a better control of the surface and interface properties of GaAs. Now, it is extremely important to know to what extent this knowledge is also useful for GaAs:In technology. In this work, the authors perform a comparative study of chemomechanical polishing and etching of GaAs:In and GaAs in aqueous solutions of NaOCl, and reveal very different behavior of both materials.