Method of treating a gallium arsenide surface and gallium arsenide surface so treated

DETAILED DESCRIPTION What is claimed is: 1.
Method of treating a gallium arsenide surface to make it ready for passivation comprising exposing the gallium arsenide surface to silicon monoxide vapor under a vacuum of about 10.
sup.
-4 to 1 Torr for a short time of about 5 to about 30 minutes, wherein the time of exposure is that just sufficient to form a monolayer of silicon monoxide on the gallium arsenide surface and wherein the method is monitored by photoluminescence and electron paramagnetic resonance.
2.
A gallium arsenide surface, ready for passivation, said gallium arsenide surface having a monolayer of silicon monoxide on the surface.




Description:
FIELD OF INVENTION The invention relates in general to the art of treating a gallium arsenide surface and to the gallium arsenide surface so treated and in particular, to a method of treating a gallium arsenide surface to make it ready for passivation, and to the gallium arsenide surface so treated.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION GaAs devices have been unable to attain the full usefulness of Si-devices because the surface of GaAs has a high concentration of electrically harmful traps.
A good GaAs surface passivation method would lead to a much improved GaAs based metal-insulator-semiconductor field effect transistor (MISFET).
Thus, the benefits of FET Technology so widely exploited commercially in Si devices would become available for GaAs.
A GaAs based MISFET would be faster than Si.
In a second major area, GaAs microwave power MESFET Transistors would be vastly improved by reduction of inter-electrode surface leakage and breakdown.
Before one can passivate the GaAs surface, however, one must first prepare the surface for passivation by a priming or relaxing action.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION The general object of this invention is to provide a method of preparing a GaAs surface for passivation.
A more specific object of the invention is to provide a method of relieving the tension of a GaAs surface that has been tightly reconstructed