Injection-stimulated dislocation motion in semiconductors

Misfit dislocations introduced during LPE growth are shown to act as sinks for point defects introduced by 1-MeV electron bombardment in Ga1−xAlxAs1−yPy/GaAs p+n heterojunctions. Electron-beam-stimulated dislocation motion was observed directly with in situ TEM studies on previously bombarded material. SEM measurements have correlated beam-induced defect annealing with recombination-enhanced defect motion. These results suggest that dislocation networks, which are active in the dark-line-defect degradation mode of heterostructure lasers, may form by a climb mechanism which is activated by the injection-stimulated motion of point defects.