Thermal activation energy for the passivation of the n-type crystalline silicon surface by hydrogenated amorphous silicon | Zendy

J. Mitchell | Zendy; Daniel Macdonald | Zendy; Andrés Cuevas | Zendy

Open Access

Thermal activation energy for the passivation of the n-type crystalline silicon surface by hydrogenated amorphous silicon

Author(s) -

J. Mitchell,

Daniel Macdonald,

Andrés Cuevas

Publication year - 2009

Publication title -

applied physics letters

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 1.182

H-Index - 442

eISSN - 1077-3118

pISSN - 0003-6951

DOI - 10.1063/1.3120765

Subject(s) - passivation , materials science , activation energy , silicon , annealing (glass) , wafer , crystalline silicon , carrier lifetime , chemical vapor deposition , hydrogen , amorphous silicon , plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition , thin film , chemical engineering , surface energy , layer (electronics) , nanotechnology , optoelectronics , composite material , chemistry , organic chemistry , engineering

Excellent surface passivation of crystalline silicon wafers is known to occur following post-deposition thermal annealing of intrinsic a-Si:H thin-film layers deposited by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition. In this work, layer thicknesses ranging from 5 to 50 nm were used to indirectly study the surface passivation mechanism by sequentially measuring the effective carrier lifetime as a function of annealing time and temperature. From this, an activation energy of 0.7±0.1 eV was calculated, suggesting that surface passivation is reaction-limited and not determined by a bulk hydrogen diffusion process. We conclude that the primary surface reaction stems from surface rearrangement of hydrogen already near the interface.

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