Investigation of the production of quenching thermodefects in silicon

Abstract

By means of Hall effect and EPR techniques, the behavior of phosphorus is investigated in single crystals of silicon subjected to heat treatment (HT) over a wide temperature range from 300 to 1200 °C; the HT is followed by cooling at different rates. The quenched samples exhibit a significant decrease of concentration of electrically active phosphorus in their volume. The following effects are shown to underlie this observation: 1) compensation of the donor impurity by quenching thermodefects; 2) loss of electrical activity of phosphorus atoms due to their transfer into inactive positons in the silicon lattice during the quenching. The influence of parameters of the parent substance on each of these effects is studied.