Application of positron annihilation lifetime technique to the study of deep level transients in semiconductors

Abstract

Unlike its conventional applications in lattice defect characterization, positron annihilation lifetime technique was applied to study temperature-dependent deep level transients in semiconductors. Defect levels in the band gap can be determined as they are determined by conventional deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) studies. The promising advantage of this application of positron annihilation over the conventional DLTS is that it could further extract extra microstructure information of deep-level defects, such as whether a deep level defect is vacancy related or not. A demonstration of EL2 defect level transient study in GaAs was shown and the EL2 level of 0.82±0.02 eV was obtained by a standard Arrhenius analysis, similar to that in conventional DLTS studies. © 2002 American Institute of Physics.