A Study of the Effect of Deformation on Optical Absorption of MgO Single Crystals

Abstract

Abstract The concentration of V centers, produced by a hole trapped at a magnesium vacancy, has been found to increase linearly with deformation in single crystals of magnesium oxide, When one slip system is operative in the deformation process an anisotropic defect is produced whose axis is 〈100〉 perpendicular to both the {110} slip plane and 〈110〉 slip direction. This defect produces optical absorption bands at 4.07 and 5.17 eV when the deformed crystal is X‐irradiated. These bands are attributed to vacancy complexes which have trapped one or more electrons. Bleaching experiments are reported in which these bands are annihilated by electron release or the capture of holes released from the V band.