Indium phosphide (InP) is an important III-V compound, with a variety of applications, for example, in light emitting diodes (LED), InP based photonic crystals and in semiconductor lasers, heterojunction bipolar transistors in integrated circuit applications and in transistors for microwave and millimeter-wave systems. The optical and electrical properties of this compound can be further tailored by ion implantation or prospectively by swift heavy ion beams. ¶ Thus knowledge of ion-induced disorder in this material is of important fundamental and practical interest. However, the disorder produced during heavy ion irradiation and the subsequent damage accumulation and recovery in InP is far from being completely understood. In terms of the damage accumulation mechanisms, the conclusions drawn in the numerous studies performed have often been in conflict with one another. A factor contributing to the uncertainties associated with these conflicting results is a lack of information and direct observation of the “building blocks” leading to the ultimate damage created at high ion fluences as an amorphous layer. These building blocks formed at lower fluence regimes by single ion impacts can be directly observed as isolated disordered zones and ion tracks for low energy and swift heavy ion irradiation, respectively. ¶ The primary aim of this work has thus been to obtain a better understanding of the disorder in this material through direct observations and investigation of disorder produced by individual heavy ions in both energy regimes (i.e. elastic and inelastic energy deposition regimes) especially with low ion fluence irradiations. In this thesis the heavy ion induced disorder introduced by low energy Au ions (100 keV Au+) and high energy Au (200 MeV Au+16) ion irradiation in InP were investigated using Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM), Rutherford Backscattering Spectrometry (RBS/C) and Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM). ¶ The accumulation of damage due to disordered zones and ion tracks is described and discussed for both low energy and swift ion irradiation respectively. ¶ The in-situ TEM annealing of disordered zones created by 100 keV Au+ ion irradiation shows that these zones are sensitive to electron beam irradiation and anneal under electron energies not sufficient to elastically displace lattice atoms, i.e. subthreshold energies for both constituent atoms In and P. ¶ Ion tracks due to swift heavy ion irradiation were observed in this material and the interesting track morphology was described and discussed. The surface nanotopographical changes due to increasing fluence of swift heavy ions were observed by AFM where the onset of large increase in surface roughness for fluences sufficient to cause complete surface amorphization was observed. ¶ In addition to InP, the principle material of this project, a limited amount of TEM observation work has been performed on several other important compounds (apatite and monazite) irradiated by 200 MeV Au+ ions for comparative purposes. Again the observed segmental morphology of ion tracks were shown and possible track formation scenario and structure were discussed and similarities were drawn to the previously observed C60 cluster ion tracks in CaF2 as more knowledge and data base exist about defect dynamics and formation in that material.