Hydrogen passivation of acceptors in p-InP.

The problem of hydrogenation of InP has been surmounted by exposure of the InP surface to a hydrogen plasma through a thin SiN sub x (H) cap layer. This layer is H permeable at the hydrogenation temperature of 250C, but P or PH sub 3 impermeable thus minimizing PH sub 3 loss and the attendant in droplet formation. In contrast to our results for this type of plasma exposure of GaAs, we find that shallow acceptors in InP are heavily passivated, whereas shallow donors are only very weakly affected.