Defects in electron-irradiated GaAs studied by positron lifetime spectroscopy

A systematic study of electron-irradiation-induced defects in GaAs was carried out. The irradiation was performed at low temperature (4 K) with an incident energy of 2 MeV. Both, the defect formation and annealing behavior were studied in dependence on the fluence (${10}^{15}$–${10}^{19}$ ${\mathrm{cm}}^{\mathrm{-}2}$) in undoped, n-, and p-doped GaAs. Temperature-dependent positron lifetime measurements were performed between 20 and 600 K. The thermal stability of defects was studied by annealing experiments in the temperature range of 90–600 K. A defect complex, which anneals in a main stage at 300 K, was found in all GaAs samples after electron irradiation. A possible candidate for this defect is a complex of a vacancy connected with an intrinsic defect. A second vancancylike defect was observed in n-type material after annealing at 550 K. This defect was assumed to be in the As sublattice.