Improvement of ohmic contacts on GaAs with in situ cleaning

An in situ argon ion mill clean step prior to ohmic metal deposition has been demonstrated to improve the uniformity of the contact parameters and reduce the contact resistance. After ion mill cleaning, the native oxide regrowth of molecular beam epitaxy grown GaAs and AlGaAs layers in vacuum chamber was also studied to optimize the processing. These oxide layers were identified as the cause of problems in the formation of good ohmic contacts to the GaAs or AlGaAs.