High-Density Plasma Enhanced Quantum Well Intermixing in InGaAs/InGaAsP Structure Using Argon Plasma

Photoluminescence was used to study the band-gap shift of argon (Ar) plasma induced quantum well intermixing in InGaAs/InGaAsP laser structure. Ar exposure for 5 min and subsequent annealing resulted in maximum blue shift of 61.4 meV. This is the first time to use the high-density plasma enhanced intermixing technique developed in inductively coupled plasma (ICP) machine to demonstrate the result of bandgap blue-shift with the improvement of crystalline quality as compared to plasma generated from pure RF power. This technique provides a promising approach of bandgap tuning for photonic integrated circuits (PIC), which demand high crystalline quality.