NITROGEN DIVACANCIES - THE POSSIBLE CAUSE OF THE YELLOW BAND IN THE LUMINESCENCE SPECTRA OF GAN

A strong analogy is demonstrated between the well-known impurity compl ex NN1 in GaP consisting of a pair of nearest-neighbor isovalent nitro gen impurity atoms in the nitrogen-doped gallium phosphide lattice (Ga P :N), and the divacancy complex of nearest-neighbor vacancies in the nitrogen sublattice of gallium nitride. This divacancy or complexes of this divacancy with impurities may be the cause of the ''yellow band' ' in the luminescence spectra of GaN. This work was presented at a ses sion of the Electrochemical Society (Paris, September 1997 by A. E. Yu novich, in Proceedings of the Second Symposium on III-V Nitride Materi als and Processes, Electrochemical Society (Pennington, New Jersey, 19 98), Vol. 98-02, p. 258. (C) 1998 American Institute of Physics. [S106 3-7826(98)00710-8].