Investigation of defect levels in Bi12SiO20 single crystals by thermally stimulated current measurements

Abstract

Bi12SiO20 (BSO) single crystal belongs to the sillenite semiconducting family known as defective compounds. The present paper investigates the defect centers in BSO grown by Czochralski method by means of thermally stimulated current (TSC) measurements performed in the 10–260 K range. The TSC glow curve obtained at heating rate of β = 0.1 K s−1 presented several peaks associated with intrinsic defect centers. The activation energies of defect centers were revealed as 0.09, 0.15, 0.18, 0.22, 0.34, 0.70 and 0.82 eV accomplishing the curve fit analyses method. The peak maximum temperatures and orders of kinetics of each deconvoluted peak were also determined as an outcome of fitting process. TSC experiments were expanded by making the measurements at various heating rates between 0.1 and 0.3 K s−1 to get information about the heating rate dependent peak parameters.