It was recalled that it had already been shown that the most fundamental hydrogen-related defects in group-IV semiconductors were interstitial hydrogen atoms occupying the bond-centre site or the interstitial tetrahedral site. Using first-principles calculations Van de Walle predicted similar properties of isolated hydrogen in other II–VI and III–V semiconductors. Another interesting prediction shown in that work was the existence of a universal alignment for the hydrogen electronic (−/+) level. Until now there was no direct experimental information regarding the individual isolated hydrogen states in compound semiconductors and most reported properties were inferred indirectly. In the present work in-situ conventional deep level transient spectroscopy and high-resolution Laplace deep level transient spectroscopy techniques were used to analyse hydrogen-related levels after low-temperature proton implantation in different II–VI and III–V semiconductors including GaAs, ZnO and CdTe. From these experimental observations the donor level of isolated hydrogen was found to keep almost a constant value in the absolute energy scale taking into account different band-offsets calculated for the whole group of semiconductors.

Donor Level of Interstitial Hydrogen in Semiconductors - Deep Level Transient Spectroscopy. V.Kolkovsky, L.Dobaczewski, K.Bonde Nielsen, V.Kolkovsky, A.Nylandsted Larsen, J.Weber: Physica B, 2009, 404[23-24], 5080-4