Study of ion-beam-induced damage and luminescence properties in terbium-implanted AlGaN

Park, J.-H.*; Wakahara, Akihiro*; Okada, Hiroshi*; Furukawa, Yuzo*; Kim, Y.-T.*; Chang, H.-J.*; Song, J.*; Shin, S.*; Lee, J.-H.*; Sato, Shinichiro; Oshima, Takeshi

Terbium (Tb) ions were implanted into AlGaN epitaxial layers at room temperature to investigate ion-beam-induced damage and luminescence properties at various doses of - Tb/cm. Rutherford backscattering spectrometry/channeling (RBS/channeling) reveals that on-beam-induced damage level steeply increases and that the damage cannot be fully recovered even after rapid thermal annealing at 1100 C, when the dose exceeds Tb/cm. On the other hand, cathodoluminescence (CL) intensity related to Tb transitions increased initially and saturated above a dose of Tb/cm. The results suggest that Tb-related luminescence properties are much susceptible to defects and nonradiative defects, namely, Tb-defect complexes, are formed under low-dose conditions even at a very low structural defect density.