Modification of charge compensation in semi-insulating semiconductors by high energy light ion irradiation


Modification of charge compensation in semi-insulating semiconductors by high energy light ion irradiation

Kabiraj, D.; Grötzschel, R.; Ghosh, S.

Abstract

High energy light ions have been used to engineer the electrical properties of semi-insulating InP and GaAs by creation and annihilation of native defects. Due to light mass, high energy ions lose most of their energy during flight inside the material by electronic excitation, which also modifies the charge states of the defect. Imbalance in charge compensation caused by irradiation induced defect engineering results in the modification of resistivity of the semi-insulating samples. The activation energies of the defect levels responsible for the modified resistivity have been estimated from the measurement of thermally activated currents. It is shown that the modified charge compensation is due to annihilation and/or creation of native defects depending on the material (GaAs or InP) and the fluence of irradiated ions. It has also been observed that annealing does not have any effect on modified compensation in InP, but in the case of GaAs, compensation recovers after thermal annealing.

Keywords: Semi-insulating semiconductors; High energy ion irradiation

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