Effects of hydrogenation on the local structure of InGaAsN quantum wells and GaAsN epilayers

We address in this paper the issue of the effects of hydrogenation on the local structure of InxGa1−xAs1−yNy quantum wells by combining In K-edge x-ray absorption and Ga K-edge x-ray diffraction anomalous fine structure experiments. We found that the cation-As bond lengths in hydrogenated samples are systematically longer than the values predicted by a valence force field model corrected for the epitaxial strain. We interpret this bond lengths stretching as a local effect of the formation of NuH complexes very recently predicted by theoretical calculations. By analyzing the Debye-Waller factor of the GauAs bond length distribution, we observed that hydrogenation removes the static disorder induced by N incorporation in GaAs; this effect is due to the unique characteristics of the N substitutional anion and to the breaking of the ionic GauN bonds upon hydrogenation