Consequences of anion vacancy nearest-neighbor hopping in III-V compound semiconductors: Drift in InP metal-insulator-semiconductor field-effect transistors

Diffusion experiments of Zn doped III-V superlattice structures have given strong evidence that the hopping of anion vacancies to nearest-neighbor sites, on the cation sublattice, is an important mode of atomic diffusion. A consequence of such hopping is the conversion of a donor state of the anion vacancy to multiple acceptor states of the cation vacancy-antisite defect complex that results. When a device is switched from depletion to accumulation, such hopping allows the material to adjust its defect distribution to a new equilibrium in the presence of the field. We show that observations of drift in InP metal-insulator-semiconductor field effect transistors, MISFETs, are consistent with this origin.