Laser rapid thermal annealing of quantum semiconductor wafers: a one step bandgap engineering technique

We report on a new Laser Rapid Thermal Annealing (Laser-RTA) technique for one-step bandgap engineering at selected areas of quantum semiconductor wafers. The technique is based on using a 150 W 980 nm fiber coupled laser diode and a 30 W TEM00 1064 nm Nd:YAG laser for background heating and ‘writing’, respectively, the regions of the quantum well intermixed (QWI) material. The implementation of a 3D Finite Element Method for modeling of laser induced temperature profiles allows for the design of processing schemes that are required for accurate bandgap engineering at the wafer level. We demonstrate that arbitrary shaped lines of the QWI material can be fabricated with the Laser-RTA technique in InGaAs/InGaAsP quantum well microstructures.