Premium
Fast and Slow Stages of Lifetime Degradation by Boron–Oxygen Centers in Crystalline Silicon
Author(s) -
Schmidt Jan,
Bothe Karsten,
Voronkov Vladimir V.,
Falster Robert
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
physica status solidi (b)
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 109
eISSN - 1521-3951
pISSN - 0370-1972
DOI - 10.1002/pssb.201900167
Subject(s) - boron , silicon , impurity , oxygen , materials science , annealing (glass) , getter , degradation (telecommunications) , doping , limiting oxygen concentration , analytical chemistry (journal) , chemical physics , chemical engineering , photochemistry , chemistry , optoelectronics , metallurgy , electronic engineering , environmental chemistry , organic chemistry , engineering
A conflict between previous and recently published data on the two‐stage light‐induced degradation (LID) of carrier lifetime in boron‐doped oxygen‐containing crystalline silicon is addressed. The previous experiments showed the activation of two boron–oxygen recombination centers with strongly differing recombination properties for the fast and slow stages of LID, whereas more recent studies found only a single center for both stages. To resolve this controversy, the historic silicon samples of these previous examinations are re‐examined in this study after more than one decade. It is found that, in the historic samples, the fast stage can be either described by two different centers or a mixture of the two, depending on the duration of previous dark annealing. A possible solution is suggested based on the involvement of different activating impurities in the boron–oxygen defect. In dark‐annealed samples, the defect consisting of boron, oxygen, and the activation impurity is present in two latent configurations, which reconfigure during LID at a fast and a slow stage. In the examined historic silicon samples, which did not undergo a gettering pretreatment, a significant concentration of an additional boron–oxygen defect with a different kind of activating impurity attached exists. The historic and modern results are thus reconciled.