Elemental specificity of ion cores and ionization entropy of vacancy-group-V-impurity atom pairs in Ge crystals: ACAR and DLTS data

The positron probing of the donor-vacancy (DV) complexes created in the single crystals of n-Ge〈D〉 (D=P, As, Sb, or Bi) by γ -irradiation Co-60 (Tirr.≈315 K) has been carried out by measuring the angular correlation of the annihilation radiation (ACAR). The maximum overlapping of the positron and electron wave functions in the subvalent shells of the ion cores has been determined for [1 1 1] crystallographic direction by normal approximation method. It has been found that this maximum is shifted from the nuclei of DV complexes in passing from the ion cores of atoms of a relatively small “size”, P and As, to more volumetric ion cores, Sb and Bi, respectively. The shift itself is accompanied by the increase of the probability of the high-momentum annihilation process of the trapped positron during its lifetime. This increase correlates well with the augmentation of the entropy of ionization revealed by DLTS (Markevich et al. Phys. Rev. B70 (2004) 235213) for group-V-impurity atom pairs in germanium. Kolmogorov-Chapmen formalism has been used for studying the probability of the high-momentum annihilation of positron trapped by DV complexes. The results obtained suggest that the growth of the configurational entropy in passing from the ion cores of relatively small “size” to more volumetric ones is accompanied by the relaxation of the ion cores inward towards the free volume related to the vacancy in DV complex.