Characteristics, behavior, and identification of electron-induced defects in GaP

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
The mechanism by which minority-carrier injection induces annealing of the defects created by electron irradiation in n-type GaP has been revisited. For this a precise determination of the energy levels of electron traps, that are observed to anneal, has been made. The annealing kinetics have been monitored versus temperature and injection density. They demonstrate that the mechanism that was originally proposed to explain the injection annealing, namely, that the activation energy for thermal annealing is decreased by a quantity equal to the energy released by hole trapping, cannot apply. Another mechanism is proposed, which has been found to apply in GaAs, to fit quantitatively the experimental results. According to this mechanism, injection annealing is athermal, and induced by alternative captures of electrons and holes on the defect site.