Electric field measuring by phase selective photoreflectance

The built-in electric fields in a MBE grown δ-doped GaAs homojunction have been investigated by the techniques of photoreflectance and phase suppression. Two Franz-Keldysh oscillation features originating from two different fields in the structure superimpose with each other in the photoreflectance spectrum. By properly selecting the reference phase of the lock-in amplifier, one of the features can be suppressed, thus enabling us to determine the electric fields from two different regions. We have demonstrated that only two PR spectra, in-phase and out-phase components, are needed to find the phase angle which suppresses one of the features. The electric field in the top layer is 3.5 ± 0.2 × 10⁵ V/cm, which is in good agreement with theoretical calculation. The electric field in the buffer layer is 1.2 ± 0.1 × 10⁴ V/cm, which suggests the existence of interface states at the buffer/substrate interface.