Recrystallization behavior of high-fluence N ⁺ -implanted GaAs studied by Raman spectroscopy

Raman spectroscopy was used to study the evolution of host lattice recrystallization in high-fluence N ⁺ -implanted GaAs. A high-fluence of N ⁺ ions (>10 ¹⁵ cm ^-2 ) was introduced into semi-insulating GaAs by the combinatorial implantation method. Subsequent thermal annealing at 800 °C was carried out to re-grow the implantation-induced amorphous layers. The dependence of Raman parameters on N contents was systematically observed for each recrystallized cell. The volume of the newly formed crystallites with original orientation decreases with increasing fluences, whereas that of crystallites of other orientations increases after high-fluence implantation and annealing. The correlation length L, representing the size of crystalline regions with preserved translational symmetry, was determined by fitting the LO phonon signal with spatial correlation model. For 10 ¹⁶ cm ^-2 implantation, the recrystallized layer consists of nano-meter-sized crystallites (∼30 nm). The dimension of the recrystallized crystallites decreases with increasing N ⁺ fluences, in good agreement with the model.