Contactless electromodulation for the nondestructive, room-temperature analysis of wafer-sized semiconductor device structures

This paper reviews the use of the contactless, nondestructive electromodulation methods of photoreflectance and contactless electroreflectance for the room temperature characterization/qualification of semiconductor device structures, including heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBT's), pseudomorphic high electron mobility transistors, quantum-well lasers, vertical cavity surface-emitting lasers, multiple-quantum-well infrared detectors, and solar cells. Special attention is paid to some recent results on (a) the illumination dependence of the evaluated electric fields (and associated doping levels) in the emitter/base and collector/base regions of GaAs-GaAlAs HBT's and (b) a pseudomorphic InGaAs-GaAs-InGaP 0.98 /spl mu/m single-quantum-well laser structure.