Real-time reflectance anisotropy spectroscopy of GaAs homoepitaxy.

Reflectance anisotropy spectroscopy (RAS) is a highly sensitive optical probe for the real-time study of the epitaxial growth of zincblende semiconductors. Here we report on (1) non-equilibrium RAS spectra acquired in real time during the homoepitaxial growth of GaAs, and (2) RAS spectra for GaAs surfaces under equilibrium with several arsenic overpressures. We show that in both cases RAS spectra can be decomposed into two basic components, each with a characteristic line shape.

A rapid reflectance-difference spectrometer for real-time semiconductor growth monitoring with sub-second time resolution.

We report on a rapid, 32-channel reflectance-difference (RD) spectrometer with sub-second spectra acquisition times and ΔR/R sensitivity in the upper 10(-4) range. The spectrometer is based on a 50 kHz photo-elastic modulator for light polarization modulation and on a lock-in amplifier for signal harmonic analysis. Multichannel operation is allowed by multiplexing the 32 outputs of the spectrometer into the input of the lock-in amplifier.