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GaN epilayers were implanted with Eu to fluences of 1×1013 Eu/cm 2 and 1×10 15 Eu/cm 2 . Post-implant thermal annealing was performed in ultra-high nitrogen pressures at temperatures up to 1450 ºC. For the lower fluence effective structural recovery of the crystal was observed for annealing at 1000 ºC while optical activation could be further improved at higher annealing temperatures. The higher fluence samples also reveal good optical activation; however, some residual implantation damage remains even for annealing at 1450 ºC which leads to a reduced incorporation of Eu on substitutional sites, a broadening of the Eu luminescence lines and to a strongly reduced fraction of optically active Eu ions. Possibilities for further optimization of implantation and annealing conditions are discussed.

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The implantation damage build-up and optical activation of a-plane and c-plane GaN epitaxial films were compared upon 300 keV Eu implantation at room temperature. The implantation defects cause an expansion of the lattice normal to the surface, i.e. along the a-direction in a-plane and along the c-direction in c-plane GaN. The defect profile is bimodal with a pronounced surface damage peak and a second damage peak deeper in the bulk of the samples in both cases. For both surface orientations, the bulk damage saturates for high fluences. Interestingly, the saturation level for a-plane GaN is nearly three times lower than that for c-plane material suggesting very efficient dynamic annealing and strong resistance to radiation. a-plane GaN also shows superior damage recovery during post-implant annealing compared to c-plane GaN. For the lowest fluence, damage in a-plane GaN was fully removed and strong Eu-related red luminescence is observed. Although some residual damage remained after annealing for higher fluences as well as in all c-plane samples, optical activation was achieved in all samples revealing the red emission lines due to the 5 D0 → 7 F2 transition in the Eu 3+ ion. The presented results demonstrate a great promise for the use of ion beam processing for a-plane GaN based electronic devices as well as for the development of radiation tolerant electronics.