Dislocation-limited minority-carrier lifetime in n-type GaP

Minority hole lifetimes as high as 2.5 ¿s have been reproducibly obtained in epitaxial GaP layers grown by an isothermal liquid-phase technique. In this material, the measured lifetimes are shown to be controlled by the dislocation density ¿D in the samples when ¿D > 5 × 104 cm¿2. A theory is presented which shows that, when the lifetime is dislocation limited, its value is close to a minimum possible value for recombination at the dislocation cores.