Kinetics of the electronic center annealing in Al2O3 crystals

Abstract

The experimental annealing kinetics of the primary electronic F, F+ centers and dimer F2 centers observed in Al2O3 produced under neutron irradiation were carefully analyzed. The developed theory takes into account the interstitial ion diffusion and recombination with immobile F-type and F2-centers, as well as mutual sequential transformation with temperature of three types of experimentally observed dimer centers which differ by net charges (0, +1, +2) with respect to the host crystalline sites. The relative initial concentrations of three types of F2 electronic defects before annealing are obtained, along with energy barriers between their ground states as well as the relaxation energies.