Abstract
We investigate the influence of Cu impurity incorporation into the silica cap during the sputtering process on the enhancement of intermixing rate of semiconductor quantum nanostructures. Using the CU:SiO2 process, we observed bandgap shift of over 200 meV from various GaAs-based quantum well (QW) heterostructures such as GaAs/AlGaAs, InAlGaP/GaAs, and GaAs/AlGaAs systems at significantly lower activation energy than the conventional impurity free vacancy disordering process (IFVD) using undoped SiO2 cap. The results suggest that the CU:SiO2 process is a promising intermixing technique for the monolithic integration of multiple active/passive photonic components on GaAs-based material systems.