Thermal stability of amorphous GaN1−xAsx alloys

GaN 1 − x As x alloys grown across the composition range by low temperature molecular beam epitaxy have great technological potential for photovoltaic applications owing to their strong absorption coefficient and wide tunability of band gap and band edges. We found that amorphous GaN1−xAsx alloys that are formed for the compositions x, in the range of x∼0.3–0.7 are stable up to 700 °C. This is surprising since growth of GaN1−xAsx above 400 °C results in phase segregation. At annealing temperatures higher than 700 °C the alloy phase segregates into GaAs:N and GaN:As. The relative size of the nanocrystals depends on the initial film composition and annealing conditions.