Modelling lifetime degradation in boron‐doped Czochralski silicon

Electron lifetime in boron‐ and oxygen‐containing silicon is known to decrease under illumination. The emerging recombination centre was previously thought to be a complex B s O 2 , of a substitutional boron atom and an oxygen dimer. However this attribution has turned out to be inconsistent with recently published data. A new model was proposed, based on a latent single‐positive complex B i O 2 that involves an interstitial boron atom B i rather than B s . Excess electrons lead to recharging the latent B i O 2 centre into the neutral state, with subsequent reconstruction into recombination‐active configuration. This model was used to simulate the reported data on production of recombination centres, in a wide range of applied illumination intensity – and found to provide a good reproduction of the data.