Electron beam induced degradation of 2DEG in AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructure

The effects of low-energy electron irradiation on the two-dimensional electron gases (2DEG's) in AlGaAs/GaAs heterostructures have been investigated. Not only the electron mobility of the 2DEG's but also the two-dimensional (2D) carriers are found to be reduced by the electron irradiation with the incident energies between 3.5 k and 8 keV and the electron dose of 1×10¹⁶ and 1×10¹⁷/cm². The degraded mobility and the removed carriers by the low-energy electron irradiation are shown to recover by isochronal annealing to some extent, but not completely below 400 °C. It is also found that considerable amount of scatterers which are created by an electron irradiation at room temperature are also created by an irradiation at 90 K. Comparing the experimental results with the Monte Carlo simulation, we speculate that the mobility degradation and the 2D carrier compensation are partly caused by the formation of complex defects in the GaAs buffer layer which are due to the excitations of core electrons of As, and that the mobility is further degraded by the formation of short-range scatterers in the heterointerface.