Heat Treatment of Amorphous and Polycrystalline Silicon Thin Films with High-Pressure H₂O Vapor

Abstract

We perform an exhaustive study of the role neutrino telescopes could play in the discovery and exploration of supersymmetric extensions of the Standard Model with a long-lived stau next-to-lightest superparticle. These staus are produced in pairs by cosmic neutrino interactions in the Earth matter. We show that the background of stau events to the standard muon signal is negligible and plays no role in the determination of the cosmic neutrino flux. On the other hand, one can expect up to 50 pair events per year in a cubic kilometre detector such as IceCube, if the superpartner mass spectrum and the high-energy cosmic neutrino flux are close to experimental bounds.Keywords: ultra high energy photons and neutrinos, neutrino and gamma astronomy ArXiv ePrint: hep-ph/0604188

Highly enhanced photoluminescence of as-anodized and electrochemically oxidized nanocrystalline p-type porous silicon treated by high-pressure water vapor annealing

“…In poly-crystalline Si films, the HWA is very effective to decrease the interfacial trap density at the grain boundaries and to enhance the carrier mobility [13]. The HWA has been carried out using both asanodized PS and ECO-treated PS.…”

Heat treatment of amorphous silicon p-i-n solar cells with high-pressure H2O vapor

“…H 2 O vapor molecules incorporate into those films and effectively terminate electrical active silicon dangling bonds. In our previous studies on a-Si [6], the dark conductivity of low pressure chemical vapor deposited amorphous silicon (LPCVD a-Si) films remarkably decreased from the order of 10 − 8 to 10 − 12 S/cm and their photoconductivity increased from the order of 10 − 8 to 10 − 7 S/cm when they were heated with H 2 O vapor pressure up to 2 × 10 6 Pa at temperatures between 190 and 270°C, as shown in Fig. 1.…”

“…High-pressure H 2 O vapor heat treatment was developed to reduce the density of defect states in SiO 2 , a-Si, and poly-Si films and their interfaces [5][6][7][8][9]. H 2 O vapor molecules incorporate into those films and effectively terminate electrical active silicon dangling bonds.…”

Heat treatment in 110 °C liquid water used for passivating silicon surfaces

“…Many famous passivation techniques have been developed for surface passivation, for example, formation of thermally grown SiO 2 layers [20], hydrogenation treatment [21,22], fieldeffect passivation caused by fixed charges in SiN or aluminum oxide [23,24], and high-pressure H 2 O vapor heat treatment [25][26][27][28][29]. We have recently proposed simple heat treatment in liquid water at 110°C for low-temperature surface passivation techniques for silicon substrates [30,31].…”