IRRADIATION-INDUCED DEFECTS IN THIN ALUMINUM FILMS STUDIED BY 1 F NOISE/

The paper reports on the recovery of irradiation-induced defects in th in aluminium films as studied by measurements of the electrical 1/f no ise. The defects are produced by irradiation with 1 MeV electrons at 1 0 K, which results in a strong increase of the noise. Subsequent isoch ronal annealing at progressively higher temperatures causes the 1/f no ise measured at 10 K to recover in discrete steps which occur at the s ame temperatures as the well-known recovery stages of the irradiation- induced electrical resistivity increase. In the noise measurements at 40 K, however, an additional recovery step without analogue in the rec overy spectrum of the electrical resistivity is observed at 70 K. The temperature dependence and annealing behaviour of the 1/f noise may be understood in terms of thermally activated motion of defects in a dis torted lattice potential. A microscopic explanation of the present obs ervation as well as of earlier measurements on Cu by Pelz and Clarke w ithin the framework of the two-interstitial model of radiation damage of metals is presented.