There is a wide range of experimental results related to dislocations in diamond, group IV, II-VI, III-V semiconducting compounds, but few of these come from isolated, well-characterized individual dislocations. We are here concerned with only those results obtained in a transmission electron microscope so that the dislocations responsible were individually imaged. The luminescence properties of the dislocations were studied by cathodoluminescence performed at low temperatures (~30K) achieved by liquid helium cooling. Both spectra and monochromatic cathodoluminescence images have been obtained, in some cases as a function of temperature.There are two aspects of this work. One is mainly of technological significance. By understanding the luminescence properties of dislocations in epitaxial structures, future non-destructive evaluation will be enhanced. The second aim is to arrive at a good detailed understanding of the basic physics associated with carrier recombination near dislocations as revealed by local luminescence properties.
