LED Fabrication Procedure

Diffusion
1. Place 2 small pieces of GaAsP into a quartz tube with a small piece of zinc arsenide (Zn
3
As
2
) in between.
Put a quartz plug near the open end of the tube.
2. First, attach the tube to the pumping setup and use the mechanical pump to pump down the cryo pump.
Fill the cryo pump with liquid nitrogen to near the top of the Styrofoam. This should take a couple
fillings due to evaporation and let it settle for a little bit when liquid nitrogen bubbles up through the
center column.
3. Make sure all the valves are shut and begin to vacuum down the sample chamber with the mechanical
pump. Make sure to open the valve to the sample chamber slowly so that the glass plug does not move
significantly. Close the valves again and then open the sample chamber up to the cryo pump slowly. Let
it vacuum down to around ~0.1-0.2 torr on the meter, which should take about 5 minutes or so.
4. Seal the tube by melting the plug and tube together using the torch. Make sure to melt all sides to form a
complete seal. Ideally, the seal will glow evenly when hot and be clear with no bubbles when it is cool.
NOTE: Wear proper eye protection when using the torch because hot quartz will emit UV
radiation.
5. Put the sealed tube into the furnace set at 800 C for ~5 minutes.
6. Remove the tube carefully with the long tweezers. Let it cool on a piece of aluminum foil. Do not use a
piece of Technicloth or paper towel because it could burn or possibly catch on fire.
7. Score the tube with a file so that you can break it. Putting water on the filed area can help with the
breaking procedure. Break it away from your body into the hood and remove the small GaAsP wafer
pieces.
8. Carefully dispose of the arsenic waste by wrapping it all up and then taking off your gloves around it.
Anything that could have arsenic on it needs to be disposed together. Throw this bundle onto the top
shelf in hood in the cleanroom antechamber.
9. Before you do the first photolithography step, you should etch the sample for 30 seconds to give yourself
a nice, clean surface to spin.
Photolithography 1
1. Turn on vacuum for the spin coater as well as the nitrogen and place the GaAsP with Zn impurities onto
the chuck.
2. Cover the wafer with S1813 photoresist.
3. Close the lid and spin for 60 seconds at 3000 rpm.
4. Turn off the vacuum and put the wafer on a hot plate set to 90 C for 3 minutes to soft bake.
5. Align the LED mask with holes to maximize the total number of contacts and expose for 25 seconds.
Since S1813 is a positive resist, use the pattern with opaque dots.
6. Develop the wafer for 30 seconds MF-319 developer, then rinse with deionized H
2
0 and dry with
nitrogen.
7. Look at the wafer under the microscope. If the contacts are not clearly defined, then continue to develop
in 5 second increments until they are very crisp and clear. There should be no photoresist in between
contacts at this point.

Etching
1. After you have developed the contacts, then put the wafer into the GaAsP etching solution for 2 minutes
at 50 C.
2. After etching, rinse with deionized H
2
0 and dry with nitrogen.
3. Check etching under the microscope. If there is not a clear distinction between contacts and background,
you might need to etch for longer. Additionally, it might be possible to see the wafer emit red light at this
point since the microscope is exciting the p-n junction.
Photolithography 2
1. Turn on vacuum for the spin coater as well as the nitrogen and place the GaAsP with contacts onto the
chuck.
2. Cover the wafer with S1813 photoresist.
3. Close the lid and spin for 60 seconds at 3000 rpm.
4. Turn off the vacuum and put the wafer on a hot plate set to 90 C for 3 minutes to soft bake.
5. Align the mask with the opposite pattern to above (clear holes) so that you can see your contacts through
the holes. This will ensure that the contacts are actually over your p-n junction.
6. Expose the pattern for 25 seconds to UV light.
7. Develop the wafer for 30 seconds MF-319 developer, then rinse with deionized H
2
0 and dry with
nitrogen.
8. Look at the wafer under the microscope. If the contacts are not clearly defined, then continue to develop
in 5 second increments until they are very crisp and clear. At this point, the photoresist should only be
between the contacts, not on top of them.
Metal Deposition
1. Place the sample in the evaporator using the instructions present with the instrument.
2. We will use 2 charges, chromium and gold. Load these into the chamber with your sample.
3. After pumping the chamber down, deposit a small layer of chromium (~10 nm).
4. Now, move the shutter and deposit a layer of gold (~100 nm).
5. Remove the samples and charges with the evaporator instructions.
6. Place samples into a beaker filled with acetone for 20 minutes that should dissolve the photoresist. If this
does not work, you can also try a bath of MF-319. The end result should be that the gold in between the
contacts lifted off when the photoresist dissolved, leaving you with nice contacts over every remaining
p-n junction. If neither of these techniques work, you should try the sonicator in the far hood for ~30
seconds.
7. Rinse with deionized H
2
0 and dry with nitrogen.
Testing
1. Bring your sample to the other room and put it under the Semiconductor Parameter Analyzer.
2. Lower the probe until it touches a contact and then run the MATLAB program that varies the voltage and
current. You can turn on the vacuum to help keep your sample stationary and it should be about 6 V for
your LED to light up.
3. This program will extract the relevant characteristics of your LED.

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