Thermally induced native defect transform in annealed GaSb

Undoped p-type GaSb single crystals were annealed at 550–600 °C for 100 h in ambient antimony. The annealed GaSb samples were investigated by Hall effect measurement, glow discharge mass spectroscopy (GDMS), infrared (IR) optical transmission and photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. Compared with the as-grown GaSb single crystal, the annealed GaSb samples have lower hole concentrations and weak native acceptor related PL peaks, indicating the reduction of the concentration of gallium antisite related native acceptor defects. Consequently, the below gap infrared transmission of the GaSb samples is enhanced after the thermal treatment. The mechanism about the reduction of the native defect concentration and its influence on the material property were discussed.