Photoreflectance from GaAs and GaAs/GaAs interfaces

Photoreflectance from semi-insulating GaAs, and GaAs/GaAs interfaces, is discussed in terms of its behavior with temperature, doping, epilayer thickness, and laser intensity. Semi-insulating substrates show an exciton-related band-edge signal below 200 K and an impurity-related photoreflectance above 400 K. At intermediate temperatures the band-edge signal from thin GaAs epilayers contains a contribution from the epilayer-substrate interface. The interface effect depends on the epilayer's thickness, doping, and carrier mobility. The effect broadens the band-edge photoreflectance by 5--10 meV, and artifically lowers the estimates for the critical-point energy, ECP, obtained through the customary third-derivative functional fit to the data.