Acceptor reactivation kinetics in heavily carbon-doped GaAs epitaxial layers

The reactivation kinetics of the acceptor behavior of carbon in GaAs layers has been studied. The reactivation was achieved by ex situ rapid thermal annealing. To follow the carbon reactivation process, a multistage annealing experiment was performed, with changes in the sample carrier concentration monitored at each stage. An analysis of these data indicates that carbon reactivation follows a first-order kinetics process that can be explained by a model which includes the effects of dopant repassivation by hydrogen retrapping during hydrogen out-diffusion, and a dependence of the attempt frequency with the carbon concentration. The reactivation occurs with an activation energy of 1.41 eV.