The elimination of divacancies (V2) upon isochronal and isothermal annealing has been studied in oxygen-rich p-type silicon by means of deep level transient spectroscopy (DLTS) and high resolution Laplace DLTS. Divacancies were introduced into the crystals by irradiation with 4 or 6 MeV electrons. The temperature range of the divacancy disappearance was found to be 225-300 °C upon 30 min isochronal annealing in the samples studied. A clear anti-correlation between the disappearance of V2 and the appearance of two hole traps with activation energies for hole emission of 0.23 eV and 0.08 eV was observed. It is argued that these traps are related to the first and second donor levels of the divacancy-oxygen (V2O) complex, respectively. Significant electric field enhancement of the hole emission from the second donor level of the V2O center occurred in the diodes studied. It is shown that in the range of electric field from 4 × 10 3 to 1.2 × 104 V/cm the emission enhancement is associated with phonon-assisted tunnelling. © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC. ; cited By (since 1996)0