The presence of an internal strain arising from the GaAs/spin-on-glass (SOG)/Si bonding procedure was investigated. In addition, the magnitude of any residual stress at room temperature and the mechanisms that may impose a stress, leading to elastic or plastic deformation of the bonded GaAs films, were identified.

A comparative study of biaxial strain and stress, as a function of temperature in the range of 80- 300 K, in a bonded 2 μm-thick GaAs/SOG/Si sample and in an epitaxial 2 μm-thick GaAs/Si sample, grown by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE), will be presented. The type and magnitude of strain were determined by photoreflectance spectroscopy. In the case of GaAs/SOG/Si, the strain in the GaAs layer was found to be negligible, with compressive character, at room temperature and tensile in all other measured temperatures, whereas for the epitaxial GaAs/Si, the strain was taking significant tensile values in all temperatures. Furthermore, the strain for both samples was increasing with temperature reduction, as it is expected for a thermal strain induced by the different thermal expansion coefficients of GaAs and Si.

The comparative study indicated clearly that the bonded GaAs/SOG/Si films are essentially strain-free at room temperature. This is a very important result for the good reliability of laser diodes that can be processed from such bonded GaAs material, which also has a crystal quality similar to that of the available GaAs substrates.