Annealing of the Sb-vacancy and a closely related radiation induced defect in n-type germanium

Deep level transient spectroscopy was used to study the defects induced by alpha-particle irradiation from an Am241 source in antimony doped n-type germanium. Previous investigations of the well know Sb-vacancy defect have led to the discovery of a second defect with very similar emission properties, referred to as the E′. Although both defects have similar emission rates, they have very different annealing properties. In this study we further investigated these properties of the E′ in Sb doped samples irradiated at 270 K with alpha particles from an Am241 source. Laplace deep level transient spectroscopy was used to determine the concentration of each defect. An isothermal annealing study of the E′ was carried out in the temperature range 300 K to 325 K in 5 K increments, while the Sb-vacancy was annealed out completely at 410 K onwards, long after the E′ was completely annealed out. The annealing activation energy was determined through isothermal annealing profiles for both the Sb-Vacancy and the E′ as 1.05 eV and 0.73 eV respectively with a prefactor of 2.05 × 109 s−1 and 2.7 × 108 s−1.