Recently

Pr-doped GaN has been attracting much interest because of its potential applications in optical communications and full color displays. Pr-doped GaN can produce IR emission at 1.3 μm and visible red emission at 650 nm. Pr ions are usually introduced into GaN either during growth process or by ion implantation. As we know that ion implantation doping has a lot of advantages

such as the selective doping of certain areas on the sample

the introduction of a large number of elements

and precise control of dopant concentration and depth distribution. It is necessary to anneal in order to achieve electrically or optically active doping and remove the damages induced by ion implantation. The micro-structure and photoluminescence (PL) properties of Pr-implanted GaN thin films have been studied. RBS/Channeling technique was used to explore the damage introduction of GaN:Pr sample and the damage recovery at high annealing temperature. A complete recovery of the ion implantation damage can not be achieved at annealing temperatures up to 1050℃. AFM results indicate that Pr ion implantation has caused surface roughness and pronounced material swelling with a step height as large as 23.368 nm. The PL experimental results indicate that the PL efficiency increases exponentially with annealing temperature up to the maximum temperature of 1050℃. The thermal activation energy

E

a

is 5.8 eV by data fitting.