Evolution of InP surfaces under low fluence pulsed UV irradiation

An InP wafer was irradiated in air by a series of UV pulses from a nitrogen laser with fluences of 120 mJ/cm² and 80 mJ/cm². These fluences are below the single-pulse ablation threshold of InP. Over the studied region the distribution of the radiation intensity was uniform. The number of pulses varied from 50 to 6000. The evolution of the surface morphology and structure was characterized by atomic force microscopy, optical microscopy and Raman spectroscopy. The relationship between mound size and the number of pulses starts out following a power law, but saturates for a sufficiently high number of pulses. The crossover point is a function of fluence. A similar relation exists for the surface roughness. Raman spectroscopic investigations showed little change in local crystalline structure of the processed surface layer.