Passivation of Edge States in Etched InAs Sidewalls

Abstract

We investigate different methods of passivating sidewalls of wet etched InAs heterostructures in order to suppress inherent edge conduction that is presumed to occur due to band bending at the surface leading to charge carrier accumulation. Passivation techniques including sulfur, positively charged compensation dopants and plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition of $\mathrm{SiN}_{\mathrm{x}}$ do not show an improvement. Surprisingly, atomic layer deposition of $\mathrm{Al}_{\mathrm{2}}\mathrm{O}_{\mathrm{3}}$ leads to an increase in edge resistivity of more than an order of magnitude. While the mechanism behind this change is not fully understood, possible reasons are suggested.