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Unexpectedly High Minority‐Carrier Lifetimes Exceeding 20 ms Measured on 1.4‐Ω cm n ‐Type Silicon Wafers
Author(s) -
VeithWolf Boris A.,
Schmidt Jan
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
physica status solidi (rrl) – rapid research letters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.786
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1862-6270
pISSN - 1862-6254
DOI - 10.1002/pssr.201700235
Subject(s) - passivation , wafer , homogeneous , silicon , materials science , carrier lifetime , optoelectronics , layer (electronics) , analytical chemistry (journal) , measure (data warehouse) , chemistry , nanotechnology , physics , chromatography , database , computer science , thermodynamics
We measure very high minority‐carrier lifetimes exceeding 20 ms on 1.4‐Ω cm n ‐type Czochralski silicon wafers passivated using plasma‐assisted atomic‐layer‐deposited Al 2 O 3 on both wafer surfaces. The measured maximum effective lifetimes are surprisingly high as they significantly exceed the intrinsic lifetime limit previously reported in the literature. We are able to measure such high lifetimes by realizing an exceptionally homogeneous Al 2 O 3 surface passivation on large‐area samples (12.5 × 12.5 cm 2 ). The importance of the homogeneous passivation is demonstrated by comparison with samples of locally reduced passivation quality.