Non-destructive optical characterization of the surface region in bulk semiconductors and heterostructures

This paper describes application of picosecond non-degenerate four-wave mix ing spectroscopy for the characterization of the surface region in layered semiconductor heterostructures. To demonstrate the influence of decreasing dimensionality of a structure on the experimental results, three model syst ems with progressively decreasing average layer thickness l(z): bulk GaAs ( l(z) --> infinity), CdTe/ZnTe heterostructure (l(z) approximate to 1 mu m), and GaAs/InGaAs MQW structure (l(z) approximate to 10 nm) were characteriz ed by non-degenerate four-wave mixing. Analysis of the obtained data demons trates important aspects related to application of this technique for the c haracterization of thin films and low-dimensional structures. (C) 2000 Else vier Science S.A. All rights reserved.