Study of N ions implantation induced quantum well intermixing in GaInP/AlGaInP quantum well structures

•IIID induced QWI was firstly investigated in GaInP/AlGaInP 650 nm LD using N ion implantation.•Largest blue-shift of 54.9 nm was obtained with higher intensity and narrower FWHM.•The layer crystal and hetero-structure interfaces optimization improves the PL.•XPS results show that implanting N ions tend to form Ga–N besides inducing QWI.

N ions implantation induced quantum well intermixing in GaInP/AlGaInP triple quantum-well laser structures was firstly reported in this work. N ions were implanted with the energy of 40 keV and dose of 1e17 ions/cm2, and thereafter rapid thermal annealing process were performed at 750 °C from 40 s to 200 s to induce the intermixing. The photoluminescence wavelength blue-shifts were found increased with the increasing time and the largest blue-shift of 54.9 nm was obtained for 200 s annealing. Surface morphology results shows that the photoluminescence improvement in the annealing samples came from the restoration effect of the layer crystal and hetero-structure interfaces. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy tests shows that the implanting N ions tend to form Ga–N bonding besides generating point defect to induce quantum well intermixing.