Aluminum Migration and Intrinsic Defect Interaction in Single-Crystal Zinc Oxide

Countless applications rely on the electrical or optical properties of semiconductors, so understanding those properties is the key to continued success. The authors develop a detailed physical model of vacancy-mediated diffusion and use it to describe Al diffusion in ZnO successfully. This model couples impurity diffusion to the material's intrinsic defect properties, allowing for their determination from defect-concentration profiles. While ZnO is an interesting material in its own right, the model is still more significant, as it may be adapted for any system in which vacancy-mediated diffusion is dominant.