We have investigated the radiation enhanced diffusion of ion defects during reactive ion beam etching of GaAs and InP, using the multiple quantum well (MQW) probe technique. During low energy (sub-keV) Ar+ ion exposure, illumination with light of energy above the band gap can substantially reduce the photoluminescence efficiency of MQW samples, relative to those which were not laser illuminated; the degradation of luminescence efficiency increases with the intensity of the light. Illumination with light of energy below the band gap produces a slight increase in the damage profiles. The observation of enhanced defect diffusion due to optical radiation in our studies suggests that in ion-assisted etching of semiconductors, the generation of excess electron-hole pairs and their subsequent recombination can play an important role in the propagation of defects into the substrate.
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Chen et al. (1996) studied this question.