Investigation of strain-compensated InGaAs(P)/InGaAs(P)/InP multiple quantum well structures grown by LP-MOVPE

A controversy exists regarding the effectiveness, in the high strain case, of the strain-compensated InGaAs(P)/InGaAs(P)/InP multiple quantum well (MQW) structures. In this paper, the mechanism of the crystal quality degradation in the high strain case is analyzed. Based on our experiments and analysis, we suggest that the crystal quality degradation is predominately affected by the growth temperature and V/III ratios in the gas phase. We demonstrate that, in the case of high strain in the wells, high quality and stable strain-compensated MQW structures can be grown at relatively low growth temperature and relatively high V/III ratios in the gas phase through decreasing the strain in barriers and increasing the thicknesses of barriers simultaneously to achieve zero net strain.