XPS and AFM Study of GaAs Surface Treatment

Obtaining smooth and atomically clean surfaces is an important step in the preparation of a surface for device manufacturing. In this work different processes are evaluated for cleaning a GaAs surface. A good surface cleaning treatment is that which provides a high level of uniformity and controllability of the surface. Different techniques are useful as cleaning treatments depending on the growth process to be used. The goal is to remove the oxygen and carbon contaminants and then form a thin oxide film to protect the surface, which is easy to remove later with thermal desorption mechanism like molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) with minimal impact to the surface. In this study, atomic force microscopy (AFM), x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) were used to characterize the structure of the surface, the comparison, as well as detect oxygen and carbon contaminant on the GaAs surface. This study consists in two parts. The first part the surface was subjected to different chemical treatments. The chemical solutions were: (a) H2SO4:H2O2:H2O (4:1:100), (b) HCl: H2O (1:3), (c) NH4OH 29%. The treatments (a) and (b) reduced the oxygen on the surface. Treatment (c) reduces carbon contamination. In the second part we made MOS devices on the surfaces treated. They were characterized by CV and IV electrical measurements. They show frequency dispersion.