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Radiation induced electronic trap states and local structural disorder in van~der~Waals bonded semiconductor crystals

In controlled X-ray irradiation experiments, the formation of trap states in the prototypical van der Waals bonded semiconductor Rubrene is studied quantitatively for doses up to 82 Gy (Gy = J/kg). About 100 electronic trap states, located around 0.3 eV above the valence band, are created by each absorbed 8 keV photon which is 2-3 orders of magnitude more than 1 MeV protons produce. Thermal annealing is shown to reduce these traps. Local structural disorder, which has also been induced by other means in different studies, is thus identified as a common origin of trap states in van der Waals bonded molecular organic semiconductors.