Vacancy-type defects in bulk GaN grown by the Na-flux method probed using positron annihilation

Defects in bulk GaN grown by the Na-flux method have been studied using a positron annihilation technique. Pyramidal bulk samples showed striation and inhomogeneous color distributions. Measurements of the Doppler broadening spectra of the annihilation radiation and lifetime spectra of positrons revealed that the concentration of vacancy-type defects increased with decreasing transparency of the samples. The major defect species was identified as a Ga vacancy coupled with nitrogen vacancies. A correlation between the oxygen incorporation and the introduction of such vacancies was observed. For c-plane GaN grown by a coalescence growth method, the concentration of vacancy-type defects was close to or under the detection limit of positron annihilation technique (≤1015 cm−3), suggesting that high-quality bulk GaN can be fabricated using this method.