Displacement damage and predicted non-ionizing energy loss in GaAs

Abstract

Large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, along with bond-order interatomic potentials, have been applied to study the defect production for lattice atom recoil energies from 500 eV to 20 keV in gallium arsenide (GaAs). At low energies, the most surviving defects are single interstitials and vacancies, and only 20% of the interstitial population is contained in clusters. However, a direct-impact amorphization in GaAs occurs with a high degree of probability during the cascade lifetime for Ga PKAs (primary knock-on atoms) with energies larger than 2 keV. The results reveal a non-linear defect production that increases with the PKA energy. The damage density within a cascade core is evaluated, and used to develop a model that describes a new energy partition function. Based on the MD results, we have developed a model to determine the non-ionizing energy loss (NIEL) in GaAs, which can be used to predict the displacement damage degradation induced by space radiation on electronic components. The calculated NIEL predictions are compared with the available data, thus validating the NIEL model developed in this study.

Document Details

Document Type
Pub Defense Publication
Publication Date
Mar 07, 2017
Source ID
10.1063/1.4977861

Entities

People

  • Danhong Huang
  • Efrain Hernandez-rivera
  • Fei Gao
  • Nanjun Chen
  • Paul D. Levan

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory
  • University of Michigan

Tags

Fields of Study

  • Materials science
  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Modeling and Simulation
  • Materials Science and Engineering.
  • Solar Physics

Technology Areas

  • Microelectronics
  • Space