Multiple-hydrogen complexes in dilute nitride alloys

Complexes formed by H and the isoelectronic impurity N in GaAs1-yNy alloys have been widely investigated to explain the significant effects of N on the host material properties and their passivation by H. However, available results still present a quite puzzling picture, none of the models proposed by theory for the N-H complexes being able to account for all of the experimental findings. An N-H2* complex first proposed by theory was challenged by infrared results. A following C2ν complex has been challenged by a recent high resolution x-ray diffraction and photoluminescence spectroscopy study questioning the structural effects of this complex. In the present study, we show that a peculiar character of the H interaction with an isoelectronic impurity can induce the formation of novel, multiple-H complexes. In turn, one of this complexes can account for the H structural effects recently observed, thus reconciling theory and experiment