Abstract
This thesis presents the results of a study of the thermal stability of InGaAs and InGaAsP material systems fabricated on InP substrates. We have used photoluminescence, coupled with repetitive annealing to follow the diffusion of a single, 100A, quantum well, of either InGaAs or InGaAsP. Structures were designed such that in each sample only atoms on one sublattice were diffusing, so that any changes in the photoluminscence would be solely due to a single sublattice. We concluded that the interdiffusion process was Fickian with a diffusion coefficient that was concentration independent. Contrary to some of the data in the literature, the substrate type had no effect upon the intermixing, neither did zinc incorporated during MOCVD growth. It was shown that the interdiffusion of the group III and group V atoms were identical and could be described by an Arrhenius expression with EA = 3.49 +/-0.15 eV and DO = 0.12 +0.66 -0.02 cm2 s-1.