An annealing study of electron irradiation-induced defects in GaAs

Abstract

Isochronal and isothermal annealing experiments on defects produced by 1‐MeV electron irradiation at room temperature have been performed on n‐type GaAs (vapor phase epitaxy layers). In addition to the previously reported irradiation‐induced defects E2 to E5, three new traps have been observed (P1 to P3) and their thermal behavior has been studied together with the thermal behavior of the traps E2–E5. The trap E2 is shown to exhibit an annealing kinetics which can be decomposed into the sum of two first‐order kinetics, the first one having the same annealing rate as the annealing kinetics of the traps E3 and E5. These observations lead to an interpretation of the annealing mechanism: annihilation of vacancy‐interstitial pairs or vacancy‐antisite defect pairs, and E2 is tentatively identified as a vacancy.