Annealing related defects in gallium arsenide

In recent years, interest in the binary and ternary compound semiconductors has grown considerably. The thermal diffusion of impurities, which is a basic process of silicon technology, is much more limited in the compound semiconductors. The effect of thermal dissociation in GaAs, a widely used binary semiconductor, and the difficulties in doping which ensue because of it, have provided the motivation for this work. Low temperature photoluminescence is employed in an effort to more fully understand the nature of the defects generated by annealing. With the insight gained in this manner, a tentative solution to the problem is proposed and evaluated.