An effective approach for the minimization of errors in capacitance-voltage carrier profiling of quantum structures

Experimental capacitance-voltage (C-V) profiling of semiconductor heterojunctions and quantum wells has remained ever important and relevant. The apparent carrier distributions (ACDs) thus obtained reveal the carrier depletions, carrier peaks and their positions, in and around the quantum structures. Inevitable errors, encountered in such measurements, are the deviations of the peak concentrations of the ACDs and their positions, from the actual carrier peaks obtained from quantum mechanical computations with the fundamental parameters. In spite of the very wide use of the C-V method, comprehensive discussions on the qualitative and quantitative nature of the errors remain wanting. The errors are dependent on the fundamental parameters, the temperature of measurements, the Debye length, and the series resistance. In this paper, the errors have been studied with doping concentration, band offset, and temperature. From this study, a rough estimate may be drawn about the error. It is seen that the error in the position of the ACD peak decreases at higher doping, higher band offset, and lower temperature, whereas the error in the peak concentration changes in a strange fashion. A completely new method is introduced, for derivation of the carrier profiles from C-V measurements on quantum structures to minimize errors which are inevitable in the conventional formulation. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.