Characterization of the DX centers in AlGaAs:Si by admittance spectroscopy

Abstract

In this work we have applied the admittance spectroscopy technique to characterize the DX centers in AlxGa1−xAs alloys doped with silicon. Our experimental results reveal the existence of two DX centers related to silicon in AlxGa1−xAs alloys, named DX-I and DX-II centers, with thermal activation energies of 0.370 and 0.415 eV, respectively. These values are lower than those obtained by other authors using capacitance techniques. To explain this disagreement it should be noticed that capacitance techniques can be affected by the nonexponential behavior of the thermal emission transients of the DX centers in AlxGa1−xAs alloys.