Wet sulfur passivation of GaSb(100) surface for optoelectronic applications

A comparative analysis of the properties of the non-passivated and S-passivated GaSb(1 0 0) surfaces has been performed through PL, AFM and RHEED characterization. The samples treated with a 1 M Na2S aqueous solution demonstrate an increase in the 5 K PL intensity. According to AFM data, the annealing of the S-passivated GaSb(1 0 0) leads to the formation of the clean flat (1 0 0) surface. Moreover, after annealing the PL intensity of the S-passivated GaSb(1 0 0) surfaces decreases by 20%, whereas for the non-passivated samples it drops by more than a factor of 4. The method of wet sulfur passivation has shown great effectiveness in pre-epitaxial processing for LPE and MBE growth of the GaSb-related materials for optoelectronics. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.